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FULFILLMENT 








FULFILLMENT 

By 

ELIZABETH NEWPORT HEPBURN 

"The ftrongetf love is that which—at 
whatever age it comes — mo$l takes 
up aU the forces of personality. . . 

—ELLEN KEY 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1924 











COPYBIGHT, 1924, 

BY 

ELIZABETH NEWPORT HEPBURN 



Cl A 79 32 4 2 .. 


PRINTED IN 

THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 


HAY 10 *24 




WP 


v 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Part One. Brent, Frances and Aline ... 3 

Part Two. Boblee.99 

Part Third. Diana.. . 207 











FULFILLMENT 

i 

T HE papers on his desk were, or ought to 
have been, impressive in their finality, 
symbol of success after lean years. Yet 
Brent Appleton impatiently shoved them 
aside that September afternoon and turned to 
look through his high windows at the amazing 
panorama of lower Manhattan. 

It was one of those rare days that native 
New Yorkers know and wait for, a day when 
their haphazard, prosaic city becomes trans¬ 
formed—a trick of atmosphere—from an in¬ 
choate mass of steel and stone into a splendor 
of lofty pinnacles and swinging spider webs 
seen against a sky of enchantment. 

For assuredly Manhattan is a creature of 
baffling moods. One moment alluring, she sud¬ 
denly turns perverse; yesterday gay, to-morrow 
she becomes grim, menacing. It is in this 
last phase that she stabs the dreamers and the 
unsuccessful old with a realization of their 
plight as cruel as youth, that hard bright first 
youth still untouched by the leaven of pity or 
understanding. 

To-day, however, this potential bully was as 
captivating as a whimsical girl. Her air was 


4 


FULFILLMENT 


heady wine, her sunlight burnished splendor, 
and even her most hopeless buildings suggested 
merely the awkward promise of adolescence. 
The young lawyer found her sponging from his 
mind office details and legal intricacies. He 
saw sea and city glittering like some vast fabric 
sprinkled with diamond dust, and the sheer 
beauty of it caught him, lifted him out of him¬ 
self, and then reminded him, as beauty so 
often does, of loss and disillusion. 

He turned back to the papers on his desk. 
Here, at least, was a record of achievement. 
Closed at last, the great case, involving millions 
of money and the combative intellects of many 
men, had brought Frost, Foley and Appleton 
recognition as one of the small group of law 
firms handling the really important business 
that passes through the New York Courts. 

Yet Brent was less conscious of what he had 
accomplished than of what he personally 
lacked. In him was a fierce lust for beauty, 
adventure and delight, for the miracle youth 
forever seeks and maturity also covets, when 
it has missed that salient contentment Life 
brings to a fortunate few. 

As he sat perversely idle his door opened 
and a thin elderly man entered, a man who 
might have been the physical expression of the 
legal spirit, so lean and dry and carefully 
negative was his whole personality. The click¬ 
ing of typewriters accompanied him until he 


FRANCES AND ALINE 


5 


closed the door. Then he crossed the room and 
sat down in a chair facing Brent. He was the 
Senior partner of the firm, Mr. Andrew Frost. 

“ Miss Gail tells me that the papers are ready 
for my signature, Appleton,’’ he said crisply. 
“Yon see, I’m anxious to catch the early train, 
but I wanted to see you a moment first. ’ ’ 

He paused, slightly lifted his heavy gray 
brows and then smiled at the younger man, a 
surprisingly human smile. 

“Foley and I have been talking about you in 
my office. You have carried this load with 
very little help from the rest of us, and you 
you have done exceptionally able work. My 
congratulations, Brent. And we are grateful.” 

Brent found himself flushing at this rare 
praise. He had been associated with the firm 
for seven years and never before had Frost 
expressed any such personal appreciation. 

“I’ve done what was up to me to do, no 
more,” he said briefly, but Andrew Frost 
smiled again, that tight little smile of his which 
yet was kind, and then signed his name, 
legibly, as attorneys rarely write. 

“If only a few more of us did as much—” 
he said in his dry, fastidious voice. “But 
Foley thinks you’re seedy, run down. Why 
don’t you take a few weeks off, any time be¬ 
tween now and Christmas?” 

“How about the Cheyne case!” said Brent. 

Mr. Frost had pulled out his watch and was 


6 


FULFILLMENT 


calculating how much time he had to catch his 
train. “The Cheyne case—ah, yes—I had for¬ 
gotten. But perhaps a little later—” 

His tone was apologetic; it was Brent’s turn 
to smile. ^ . 

“Luckily holidays bore me, Mr. Frost. I’ll 
get one some time, when I need it.” 

They nodded amicably and Frost departed. 
In a mood of fresh irritation Brent asked him¬ 
self why he couldn’t be like Frost, content with 
a definite routine and two paramount interests 
—a successful law office and an excellent golf- 
course ! Unmarried, and over sixty, the senior 
partner should have been the dejected old 
bachelor of female fiction; actually he seemed 
to Brent a most satisfied, even complacent per¬ 
son. No, that was unfair, to damn as keen a 
man as Frost with such an adjective. . . . 

He put his desk in order, rang for his ste¬ 
nographer, and in five minutes was out of the 
building, walking swiftly up lower Broadway, 
a tall man, in the late thirties, with a touch of 
distinction about his fine aquiline profile and 
vigorous figure. As he went people looked 
after him, often with a touch of envy, men ap¬ 
proving his broad shoulders and deep chest 
and women noticing his look of breeding. Yet 
what acquaintances and friends remembered as 
most characteristic of Brent Appleton were his 
eyes. They were sea-blue, usually observant 
and humorous. But at times they seemed eager 


FBANCES AND ALINE 7 

and burning, lit by the dangerous flame of im¬ 
agination. 

He had meant to walk all the way; the three 
miles to his house a little above Washington 
Square often counted as a moral cocktail before 
dinner. But he remembered thal Frances had 
asked him to come home early because they 
were going to the theater. So at the City Hall 
he took a subway train, in a vestibule of which 
he found himself one of a compact group wedged 
tightly together, several men, and a tall woman 
in gray. The woman was young, and she was 
determinedly reading a novel in the bad light, 
while the train lurched and swayed uptown. 

He caught himself studying her absorbed 
face, delicately drawn yet full of character. 
He noticed the color in her cheeks: it did not 
seem to have come from a vanity case. The 
persistent way she read interested him, for she 
concentrated upon the book with the eagerness 
of the confirmed bookworm who fears interrup¬ 
tion as the i ‘dope fiend” dreads separation 
from his beloved drug. 

Then the train swerved so suddenly that she 
dropped the book. Brent dived for it, and man¬ 
aged to recover it without being stepped upon. 
As he gave it to her, with a smile, he was 
keenly aware of dark gray eyes under a velvet 
toque. Her coat was gray, too, and her fur, 
but her hair was very soft and dark about an 
oval face. 

“Thank you so much,” she said, in a voice 


8 


FULFILLMENT 


lie found delightful, and wished he might hear 
again. Then he had reached his own station, 
and the train thundered away from him 
through its echoing corridors of steel. 

As he walked to West Eleventh Street he was 
thinking that the woman with the book was a 
person one ought to know. He already knew 
the novel, 1 i Fortitude,’’ by Walpole. Brent 
had found it full of freshness and truth, with a 
youthful, almost reluctant beauty. He wished 
suddenly that Frances cared for books, that 
they had that one taste in common. Then he 
turned into his own street and saw a girl run¬ 
ning toward him, her slender, very tall figure 
full of vitality and grace. 

“Unc’ Brent, you old darling,—I’ve been 
waiting for you—ages! Pat Congdon, Laura’s 
brother, is coming right after dinner, to take 
me out to their place for over Sunday. And I 
wanted to know about the case—is it really won 
and finished, as you thought it would be if the 
top-Court Judge backed you up?” 

“It’s won,” said Brent, and forgot his tiny 
adventure and his earlier mood of depression, 
conscious only of the glowing sensation which 
Boblee so often gave him. His dead brother’s 
child was perhaps the one creature who loved 
him as all men wish to be loved, without doubt, 
sense of obligation, or the desire to criticise 
or alter. He caught her hand and swung it 
affectionately as they stood for a moment on 


FRANCES AND ALINE 


9 


the steps of the trim red brick house, with its 
window boxes freshly filled with dwarf firs. 

“No left-overs, no higher courts, Boblee. 
The slate’s wiped clean! ’ 9 

The child—she was five feet nine, though 
only seventeen,—stood quite still, looking at 
him, her brown eyes glowing, her red lips 
parted, her whole personality radiating eager¬ 
ness and affection. The door had slammed to, 
and as her uncle hunted for his key the girl 
squeezed his arm with a pressure that hurt. 

“Brent, you’re splendid! I’m prouder of 
you than of anything else in the world!” 

He smiled at her extravagance, but said, 
rather sheepishly: “Frost was decent about it 
—came to my office to congratulate me—some¬ 
thing he has never done before.” 

She laughed, a joyous childish laugh. “He’d 
better—old Pig! But of course they know how 
wonderful you are—even when they don’t say 
it.” 

They entered a wide bright hall, and a voice 
reached them: 

“Oh, Brent, you’re late. And you have to 
dress. I do think you might get home on time, 
when we’re going out!” 

Brent apologized to the voice, met Boblee’s 
laughing eyes with a careful chuckle, and then 
hurried upstairs to change. At the dinner 
table he asked his wife about her work at the 
studio and praised the soup, but said nothing 


10 


FULFILLMENT 


about the great case. When Boblee would have 
touched upon the subject, Mrs. Appleton in¬ 
timated that at home it was a good thing for 
tired lawyers to forget prosaic business, and 
the girl promptly subsided. Brent reflected 
that sometimes she had, with this beautiful 
wife of his, the manner of a spoiled puppy, 
surprisingly snubbed by one of the many adults 
who do not care for dogs. 


II 


The play that night was one destined for a 
long run on Broadway, a play by a young 
woman with a somewhat grim outlook upon 
life, whose work invariably contained a curious 
combination of imagination and logic. 

Brent Appleton had read a novel by the same 
author a year earlier, and had been struck by 
the subtle delineation of character and by a 
degree of boldness and originality. The play, 
however, had a more simple and primitive ap¬ 
peal—the old appeal of passion, both of body 
and spirit—against a conventional marriage in 
which neither husband nor wife had found hap¬ 
piness. 

To Brent the story, the atmosphere of tense 
emotion and the exceptionally fine acting, all 
proved arresting and at the same time vaguely 
irritating. Only yesterday he would have felt 
secure in his isolation from the dramatic in¬ 
tensity and throbbing desires of youth. After 
all he was only a few years under forty, he had 
had his chance, like the others, and had fum¬ 
bled it badly. Long ago he had accepted the 
tenets of the Episcopal Church, gone through 
the form of confirmation and communion, and 
then at twenty-four or five had found himself 
11 


12 


FULFILLMENT 


mentally alien to the whole close-woven fabric 
of religions faith—a common experience among 
the men of his generation. 

So for many years no religions organization 
had meant more to him than a vague set of 
rules for the control of the masses, rules that 
might, of course, prove a civilizing and re¬ 
straining influence—for them. For himself 
he was conscious of being influenced by two 
ideals, one his conviction as to the importance 
of personal integrity, the other a defined 
fastidiousness in matters of taste. Perhaps 
the last had more to do with his faithfulness 
to Frances than the conventional code that so 
many men he knew had openly or secretly 
broken. 

To-night he watched the play with an un¬ 
easy sympathy for those two storm-swept 
people for whom duty and desire were so com¬ 
pletely divorced. Never had he seen a stronger 
portrayal of a love at once an intellectual 
choice and a leaping flame. In this instance 
the woman who loves, and breaks through con¬ 
ventional barriers, is no cheap adventuress, 
no pliant Marguerite yielding to the insidious 
suggestion of the tempter, but a frank, clean- 
hearted woman convinced that in her case turn¬ 
ing from her lover would mean merely a cow¬ 
ardly acceptance of an outworn code. Brent 
noticed that the post-war audience sympathized 
with the lovers, that neither the suspicious wife 
nor the brutally possessive husband aroused 


FBANCES AND ALINE 13 


more than a perfunctory commiseration. But 
he was suddenly aware of his wife’s exclama¬ 
tion, of her averted head: 

44 Brent, what a disgusting play! I wish we 
hadn’t come. I’m thankful we didn’t bring 
Boberta.” 

They left the theater slowly, caught by the 
crowd, and speaking to acquaintances here and 
there. Brent was conscious, as he always was 
in public, of his wife’s pale refined beauty, 
which other men noted with envy of him as its 
obvious possessor. She was dressed to-night 
in a filmy black gown set with tiny gold beads 
sewn in an effective pattern outlining the low 
corsage and short scant sleeves. The bright 
coronet of hair upon her small and beautifully 
poised head was that happy hue between honey 
and gold, and had kept its distracting tend¬ 
ency to curl in little bright rings upon her fore¬ 
head and the nape of her neck. As they waited 
for their car Brent adjusted her cloak of 
black velvet and fur, thinking for the hun¬ 
dredth time that her slim throat and white 
breast were the loveliest he had ever seen. 

In the car, after they had turned from the 
glitter of Broadway, he was caught by an im¬ 
pulse he had thought atrophied long ago. 
Suddenly he kissed her throat. 

She stiffened instantly, like a child in a 
spasm of nervous fear or anger. 

44 Brent! Not here. You’ll tear my frock.” 

With a sensitive shiver he caught that note 


14 


FULFILLMENT 


in her voice which was unforgettable, though 
he had not heard it in years, saw the repel¬ 
ling gesture of her lovely body. He drew 
away. 

“I beg your pardon, Frances. I’m sorry.” 

She said nothing more and they drove home 
in silence. Brent was once again encased in 
his carefully adjusted armor of impersonality. 
After all he knew Frances, had known her for 
years,—her combination of a provocative love¬ 
liness with a frigidity that made all passion 
repellent to her. This attitude she had not 
concealed from Brent since the end of the first 
year, when they had lost the one child of their 
union, a tiny girl. Frances had suffered 
acutely, and for her there had been no op¬ 
portunity to forget the pangs of childbirth in 
the joy of motherhood. Brent had often won¬ 
dered whether she would have developed dif¬ 
ferently if the child had lived, yet this question 
seemed repeatedly answered in the negative 
when he heard her express her horror of child¬ 
bearing, her determination never again to face 
the ordeal. 

In those early years Brent had fought for his 
happiness, but had never learned to seize, as 
a marital possession, what he persisted in re¬ 
garding as the privilege of a lover. Frances 
had taken an attitude that she seemed to re¬ 
gard as irreproachable, an air of passive ac¬ 
quiescence, should he care to force the issue, 
an air of descending from high ground of her 


FRANCES AND ALINE 15 


own to meet her husband on his lower level. 
Brent had resented this by no means unique 
point of view, and had done his best to change 

it. 

At first, deeply in love, he had believed that 
stronger nerves and better health would de¬ 
velop in her understanding, normal response. 
But time had not changed her, although her 
health had improved and the character of her 
beauty had deepened. From the beginning she 
had managed her household with consummate 
skill, each detail of Brent’s material existence 
perfectly wrought: the place ran on wheels, 
the meals were well cooked and well served, 
order and grace and real artistic distinction 
gave to his house in the dignified old neighbor¬ 
hood a charm as marked as Frances’ personal 
appeal. Tradesmen and clerks admired Mrs. 
Appleton: men who knew her slightly envied 
Brent, and, as few knew her more than slightly, 
her popularity was assured, save with one or 
two crotchety people who cared especially for 
Brent and his private happiness. 

It was Frances herself who expressed 
characteristically her own reactions toward 
marriage, and with a literal, unimaginative 
clarity which seemed to suggest that further 
effort on Brent’s part would be merely ridicu¬ 
lous. 

“ Please understand that I do acknowledge 
your claim, Brent, the claim people feel mar¬ 
riage gives. If you look back you’ll see that 


16 


FULFILLMENT 


I’ve never really—refused. But I can’t make 
myself like things—to me they’re ugly. 
There’s no use pretending I see anything 
beautiful in what people call ‘Nature.’ I just 
don’t!” 

After this conversation, which had occurred 
some years earlier, Brent had told himself that 
the thing for him to do was to turn his back 
on the whole problem of sex, that burnished 
thread woven, sometimes so beautifully, into 
the warp and woof of human life. On the 
whole he succeeded fairly well: work was some¬ 
times a panacea and sometimes a narcotic. 
Yet at long intervals deep-rooted instinct 
would spring up afresh, to be instantly 
thwarted by Frances’ equally deep-rooted an¬ 
tagonism. Some suggestion, like this play to¬ 
night, that life might be more vivid and inter¬ 
esting, would bring him out of his shell, only 
to hurry him back, in a rage at himself for 
allowing his wife’s indifference to sting his 
sensitive pride. 

To-night, after their return to the house, 
she ignored the incident in the car as it seemed 
to him she always ignored things she disliked 
or wished to pretend did not exist. Sometimes 
Brent envied her this ability, but angrily, as he 
envied her even her lack of passion. Now she 
harked back to the subject of the play, saying 
how much she disliked it, that the whole theme 
was “unpleasant,” a word she used frequently, 
and one that Brent as well as Boblee had come 


FRANCES AND ALINE 17 


to dread. A waste of time, but it was over, 
thank Heaven! 

So before Brent’s study fire she talked 
brightly now of the subject nearest her heart, 
her skill in the work that filled her time. For 
the past year she had had a studio in West 
Fifty-Seventh Street, where she designed pot¬ 
tery, made sketches for wall paper and rugs, 
and interviewed people who wished to have 
their houses or apartments decorated with the 
proper emphasis on periods and color schemes. 
Frances could talk effectively about color and 
line, chintzes, tapestries, and embroideries, 
ancient and modern. 

To-night she told Brent of a new design for 
curtains in a spacious country house. 

“The border is to be Egyptian, done in old 
blues and Pompeian red, with the lotus blos¬ 
som scattered over the curtains and introduced 
into other hangings through the room. Does 
it sound attractive ? * ’ 

Brent was smoking an ancient and comfort¬ 
ing pipe, and he answered politely: 

“Very. I think you have a real gift, Fran¬ 
ces, that all your designs have character.” 

Her slim foot, in its black satin slipper with 
a gilt buckle, was tracing fanciful arabesques 
on a rug which she did not wholly approve. 
For this was Brent’s room, here were his few 
personal possessions—his books, several old 
family portraits, some Persian rugs that he 
had chosen years ago. Yet, even while he com- 


18 


FULFILLMENT 


forted himself with the homelike quality of the 
one place entirely his in a house which reflected 
Frances, Brent realized that the low-keyed 
masculine room made an extraordinarily effec¬ 
tive background for her. As she looked over 
at him her cheeks were flushed and her eyes 
gleaming, while the firelight played on her 
white hands and emphasized the grace of her 
figure and the luster of her hair. 

“ Thank you, Brent. It’s nice of you to take 
an interest. It’s fascinating work—design¬ 
ing—but there’s more money in furnishing 
houses. I’ve got a nibble—some people in 
Morristown with a mint of money.—Oh, Brent, 
I don’t know what I did with myself before the 
war, when I couldn’t see beyond housekeeping! 
Now the days aren’t long enough—and of 
course the house still takes some time. I try 
to make it run itself, but good as the maids 
are I have to keep my hand on the machinery. ’ ’ 

Brent glanced about him, at his beautifully 
ordered room; at the hundreds of books upon 
open shelves, actually dusted; at his desk, its 
papers undisturbed, yet even there the mark 
of the exquisite housewife. For a moment he 
felt that he hated his wife’s virtues, all her 
housewifely pride. He told himself that he 
would willingly have lived in disorder with 
some ugly awkward woman, if she could have 
given him love that had in it elemental splen¬ 
dor and beauty, love that might be discerning, 
mentally satisfying, and at the same time 


FRANCES AND ALINE 19 


warmly human. His thought was so hot and 
eager that for an instant he was tongue-tied, 
searching for the commonplace that would 
serve him with Frances, when she surprised 
him, as she sometimes did % 

Rising from her chair she dropped her cloak, 
and in her low frock, with its touches of gold, 
she reminded Brent of some mythical prin¬ 
cess—was she the Ice Queen or the Snow 
Maiden?—he asked himself. She came to his 
side, put her hand on his shoulder. 

“Brent, you think me queer, sometimes. But 
you wouldn’t want me to he like that woman 
in the play, would you?” 

“Which one?” said Brent carefully. 

She stood close to him, the faint fragrance 
about her, some costly French perfume, 
arousing in him a curious feeling, longing 
mixed with irritation. 

“The wife—who runs off with that dread¬ 
ful sculptor. Oh, Brent, you would rather 
have me as I am than like that —” 

Brent moved back a little. “Would I, 
Frances?” 

She laughed, bent and kissed him, a cool im¬ 
personal kiss. 

“You certainly would, my dear. I may be 
old-fashioned, passive, but I am a lady. And 
women who act and feel like that—they’re 
never nice, on the stage or in real life! ’ ’ 

Brent said quietly: “I’m probably not very 
‘nice’ myself, Frances.” 


20 


FULFILLMENT 


She stood for an instant at the door, looking 
back at him. 

“Good night, Brent. But—even if we feel 
differently about things—you know I have 
never— refused — ’ ’ 

He felt a surge of hot anger. For a moment 
he wished he were a primitive brute, and that 
they were male and female in some environ¬ 
ment utterly unlike this modern house. 
“Caveman stuff—” the cheap phrase was sud¬ 
denly a challenge. And then as the door 
closed upon her he came to himself. He was 
not elemental enough to cope with this sort of 
woman—there were men who would not mind, 
who might prefer captured frigidity to re¬ 
sponsive emotion. Those were the men who in 
the end might even create response itself, but 
he was not of their breed; to him love and pas¬ 
sion were mutual or they were nothing. 

For a long time he sat smoking his pipe, 
listening to the dulled roar of the city. He 
had his work just as Frances had hers; he had 
health, comparative youth, good friends, best 
of all he had the satisfaction of watching his 
young niece develop from childhood into lovely 
eager youth. 

Roberta Lee Appleton—named after her 
mother’s hero, and nicknamed by her father 
when still a chubby infant—was a niece to be 
proud of, more, a young person to capture 
the avuncular imagination. She was affection¬ 
ate, full of vivid promise and young idealism, 


FEANCES AND ALINE 21 

but such a contrast to Frances in every way 
that Brent sometimes wondered at the girl’s 
admiration for the woman. He would have 
supposed each would irritate the other, and yet 
this happened rarely, although sometimes the 
child seemed curiously subdued when with her 
aunt. Frances could be charming, and to her 
beauty she added the tartness of talent, the 
modem woman’s independence. It was only 
her husband, apparently, who found in her any 
lack, any puzzling abnormality. 

Finally he went up to his room, the large 
front room in the third story. His wife’s was 
in the rear, catching the sun all day; between 
their bed rooms were a large dressing room and 
bath. Brent undressed, opened his windows 
and got into bed. It was after midnight, but 
in the street he heard a woman’s low laugh, 
a man’s voice saying good night, murmuring 
sounds flowing on for a long time. At last 
the woman’s voice came again, clear and young, 
uttering the one word 44 To-morrow!” Then 
a door slammed and quick feet passed along 
the pavement toward the Avenue. 

The man who owned what was perhaps the 
most attractive house in the block turned un¬ 
easily in bed, stabbed by an envy as sharp as 
physical pain. 


Ill 


During the next week Brent was completely 
absorbed in affairs at his office, and spent sev¬ 
eral long evenings at the law library of the 
Bar Association working on a new case which 
promised to develop some of those unexpected 
twists and entertaining personal idiosyncrasies 
that tend to humanize and individualize even 
the practice of Corporation Law. Frances had 
a friend staying with her, an old schoolmate 
whom she always found entertaining, and 
Boblee was still at the Congdons’ in New 
Rochelle. So Brent worked late, and even 
dined at the club, without arousing in Frances 
that vicious antagonism to evening work which 
has no relation to marital felicity, since the 
least affectionate of wives invariably resents a 
husband’s absorption in prosaic business or 
mere ‘‘shop.” 

But on an evening near the end of the week 
he came home to dinner, glowing with a sense 
of achievement and wishing that Frances pos¬ 
sessed real interest in his work. When Boblee 
was home she was always asking questions 
about the office, often childish and irrelevant, 
but somehow comforting to the lawyer whose 
office meant more to him than a mere money- 
22 


FRANCES AND ALINE 23 


mill. Brent would have described himself as 
a man’s man, yet his keenest happiness would 
always center about his relations with women. 
Unlocking his door at seven o’clock he thought 
regretfully of Boblee. Her welcome was al¬ 
ways as fresh and eager as though he had been 
away for weeks instead of a working day, 
whereas Frances was usually pleasant, but ap¬ 
pallingly matter of fact. To-night there would 
he no Boblee, only Frances and her friend Mrs. 
Armstrong, an attractive woman, but not one 
who interested Brent particularly. She had 
come to New York for the winter and was stay¬ 
ing with the Appletons until she could find the 
apartment she wanted. 

He was hanging his coat up in the hall when 
a woman’s voice fell agreeably on his ear. 

“Oh, Brent, I’m so glad you’ve come! 
Frances has gone out to Morristown to see the 
house they want her to decorate, and she asked 
me to play hostess at dinner. She won’t be 
home till late.” 

Aline Armstrong, a widow a little over 
thirty, red-haired, fashionably slim without be¬ 
ing angular, stood on the stair above him. As 
she came on down Brent thought that she was 
finer looking than he had realized. 

With none of Frances’ beauty, she was 
individual, graceful, and she dressed with a 
touch of French daintiness and authority. To¬ 
night she wore a thin green frock that fitted 
her closely, accenting her slenderness yet re- 


24 


FULFILLMENT 


vealing no such flatness as one often sees in 
thin women. There were touches of silvery 
white here and there, and white and green 
brought out the luster of her one real beauty, 
hair of burnished copper. Her face was deli¬ 
cately pointed, her nose a little thin, but her 
mouth small, curved and red. In her little 
flat ears, set close to her head and showing 
their tips even in the earless day of bobbed 
hair, she wore pendant earrings of pearl and 
red gold, and the fashion was extrordinarily 
becoming to the clear-skinned sophisticated 
face. 

Brent was conscious of pleasure in her ap¬ 
pearance, and in the note of welcome in her 
voice. As he dressed for dinner he forgot 
even Boblee in his fresh sense of adventure 
over this prospective tete-a-tete. Of late years 
he had rather avoided women; Frances’ 
friends seldom attracted him, and moreover 
he realized the danger, rarely absent when a 
married man is at once mentally lonely and 
conscious of unsatisfied senses. So this would 
be the first time he had dined alone with any 
woman but Frances in years, and he was 
amused by his fresh anticipation. Still, he 
would have liked Boblee to be at home. She 
would have enjoyed sitting at the head of the 
table, would have appreciated the ruddy hair 
and green frock. Often Brent was enter¬ 
tained by the similarity of Boblee’s reactions 
to his own. 


FRANCES AND ALINE 25 


At the dinner table, a low bowl of valley 
lilies between them, Brent found himself talk¬ 
ing to Frances’ friend as be never talked to 
Frances. He told her of the recent victory for 
the firm, which bad been a feather in bis own 
cap, and then outlined for her the case he was 
now working on, involving an old estate and 
several heirs under age, a case which would 
probably be in chancery many years. Mrs. 
Armstrong asked intelligent questions and dis¬ 
played a knowledge of legal matters that 
seemed to him surprising. He said so, but she 
merely laughed, showing delightful little teeth 
and biting her underlip in a fashion Brent 
found attractive. 

“No, I’m not specially brilliant. It’s merely 
that my husband and brother were lawyers, and 
my father before me. So I’m used to the jar¬ 
gon, and then I’ve no fad of my own to occupy 
my mind, like Frances. Brent, don’t you 
think it’s wonderful, the way she’s forging 
ahead in her designing, and decorating houses 
too!” 

Brent agreed that it was, but they did not 
talk much about Frances. After dinner he 
suggested the theater, and they went to see 
the most popular play of that year, and en¬ 
joyed analyzing its shortcomings and wonder¬ 
ing over its success. Home a little after eleven, 
they found that Frances had not yet arrived. 
Brent lighted a fire in his library, and they 
sat beside the hearth, with a pleasant sense 


26 


FULFILLMENT 


of intimacy. They talked of plays and then 
of books, of Brent’s favorites among modern 
novelists, Hardy and Galsworthy, and of 
Aline’s frank delight in Compton Mackenzie, 
and her interest in a recent novel by Herges- 
heimer. Brent had not read it, and Aline’s de¬ 
scription piqued his curiosity, not so much 
about the book as about the woman. 

Aline Armstrong talked well, and more 
freely than the women Brent knew, with a care¬ 
less stress on matters pertaining to sex which 
he supposed must be characteristic of the so¬ 
phisticated modern woman. He wondered 
what Frances would have thought of some of 
the scenes in the novel, which Aline described, 
then told himself that Frances was subnormal 
and her friend outspoken, with a comprehen¬ 
sion of life as it is. Suddenly she said some¬ 
thing that brought the blood to his face. 

“You know, Brent, I’ve wondered about you 
and Frances—and been so glad that you seem 
happy together. As a girl she was—well, at 
school we thought her queer. I mean her feel¬ 
ing about men, about life generally. But of 
course marriage often changes people—” 

Brent was acutely conscious that she was 
not missing his heightened color, his embar¬ 
rassment. She leaned toward him, laid her 
hand on his knee, her face mobile, almost 
tender: 

“Brent, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize— Oh, 
my dear, how do you endure it?” 


FRANCES AND ALINE 27 


Brent took the hand, shook it, and then held 
it while he said, quite casually: 

“Endure what, Aline? You certainly can’t 
mean being Frances’ husband—” 

She was on her feet, now, standing so close 
that he caught the perfume of her hair, in her 
eyes a curious gleam: he asked himself irrele¬ 
vantly whether they were yellow or brown. He 
was looking at her, smiling a little, and feeling 
himself entirely master of the situation. 
Presently her eyes fell. She said quietly: 

“I suppose you feel that I’ve taken a lib¬ 
erty—been impertinent, possibly malicious. 
But I haven’t meant that, Brent—” 

He stroked the white hand with its fine blue 
veins and his smile was touched with irony. 

“I’m sure you haven’t. But there are a few 
things a man doesn’t talk about—even to a 
woman as charming as yourself!” 

The words sounded stilted, priggish, even to 
Brent himself. But they served. Silence fell 
for a little. The fire crackled and the drift¬ 
wood flame wavered and fell, touching the 
green frock and the red hair and the pearls 
with an elusive and mysterious charm. Soon 
they were talking impersonally, Aline rather 
dreamy, and Brent mentally alert, yet also con¬ 
scious of an extraordinary pleasure in their 
physical nearness. He told himself that the 
initiative lay with himself, now; that by one 
careless move Aline had lost her power to ma¬ 
nipulate their little game. He had no idea of 


28 


FULFILLMENT 


confiding to her his personal history as an un¬ 
successful and unsatisfied husband, but it 
seemed to him that her racy wit and rare grace 
were his to enjoy, and with small risk to 
either of them. 

She was a woman who seemed to have 
known well a great many men, a woman with 
a vivid appeal, quite possibly typical of their 
own time and of the post-war reactions of 
which one heard so much. But he had not 
lived so close to his own wife, and yet apart, 
without having gained the habit of self-con¬ 
trol. He had himself in hand; after all Aline 
was merely an attractive woman with whom 
he was spending an unchaperoned evening, the 
last person in the world to lose his head over, 
since her friendship for Frances made any 
complication unthinkable. 

Yet to-night he remembered his own com¬ 
parative youth. Aline woke in him such 
a vicarious realization of all he was missing 
as Frances herself had not stirred in years. He 
felt aware of half forgotten power, and even ex¬ 
perienced a flutter of normal male vanity. 
For he knew that to this woman with copper 
colored hair and small pointed face, he was a 
person of some charm, perhaps not solely of 
the intellectual order. This subtle pleasure 
was deflected somewhat by caution and a 
scorn of his own vulnerability. He called him¬ 
self impressionable, sentimental—and took 
pains to seem neither to Aline. 


FRANCES AND ALINE 29* 


When Frances finally came home she found 
the two sitting by the fire, laughing at some 
tale of a long past adventure of Aline’s at 
boarding school. It was late; Frances, though 
elated by a stroke of professional luck which 
meant increased opportunity and substantial 
returns, was tired. The three separated for 
bed, and Brent fell almost instantly to sleep. 

In Aline’s room the light burned into the 
small hours while she smoked innumerable cig¬ 
arettes, her hair a warm brightness about her 
shoulders, her bare feet thrust into quaint In¬ 
dian moccasins. 

Before snapping off the light she stood an 
instant before her mirror, studying the reflec¬ 
tion of her gleaming hair and pale face. Then, 
with a little shrug that mocked her own vanity, 
she slipped out of her negligee and regarded 
her naked slimness, startlingly white against the 
dim shadows of the room. Her face was not 
comparable with Frances’ classical outlines 
and lovely coloring; this she knew. But her 
figure, with its elusive curves and firm long 
lines, was infinitely satisfying. Here, at least, 
there was nothing to wish changed. Her last 
conscious thought, after she had turned out the 
little gold-colored lamp, was not of Brent, or 
of any man, but of her friend and hostess. 
Beautiful, clever in her fashion, Frances was 
none the less a blind fool. . . . 


IV 


Boblee returned from her nine day visit in 
New Rochelle with the feeling that she had 
grown appreciably older. She and Laura had 
come in town to school during the week, but in 
the evenings and over two Saturdays and Sun¬ 
days Roberta had received flattering attentions 
from Pat Congdon, who had reached the dis¬ 
criminating age of twenty-three, so that she 
felt she had now crossed the Rubicon dividing 
ignorant girlhood from the mature perceptions 
and experiences possible to young ladies past 
seventeen. 

She wondered whether her Uncle Brent 
would realize the change in her. At any rate 
it would be exciting to do her hair in that new 
fashion Laura had shown her, and wear her 
most sophisticated frock to dinner. She knew 
her aunt had a friend staying with her, a Mrs. 
Armstrong, but Brent usually cared little for 
Aunt Frances ’ visitors, and after dinner in the 
library she meant to sit on the arm of his chair 
and tell him bits of her recent experiences— 
all about Pat’s cleverness—he was in his last 
year at Stevens, and close to the top of his 
class—and about his “niceness” to her; he 
didn’t treat her like a little girl at all. Uncle 

30 


FRANCES AND ALINE 31 


Brent would understand how she liked Pat’s 
splendid bigness; he topped her five feet nine 
by four full inches, and it was glorious to 
dance with a boy really tall enough, after the 
little wisps who had piloted her about at 
dancing school. She was thankful that Brent 
himself was so tall, for there seemed such a 
hopeless number of fathers and uncles and 
young men under, rather than over, five feet 
nine. Boblee hated being made to feel like an 
enormous calf, masquerading as a kitten or 
puppy! 

Presently they were at dinner, her un¬ 
cle and aunt, Mrs. Armstrong and Dr. Peter 
Tomlin, Brent’s most intimate friend. Boblee 
felt it again to-night, that calf-like sensation, 
as she sat across from Mrs. Armstrong. For 
this slender, finished personage in a green and 
white frock, with wonderful beads around her 
white throat, had an enviable air of always 
knowing exactly what to do with her delightful 
little hands and feet. Boblee told herself that 
Aunt Frances was far lovelier—there was no 
comparison really—and yet about this other 
woman there was something that fascinated 
the girl, something swift and strong and bright. 
She talked a good deal, and people laughed at 
what she said, especially the men, but Boblee 
did not always understand certain quick phrases 
that seemed to rustle and gleam, like the bright 
hair and the queer beads. . . . The girl was 
very quiet; in her white crepe de chine frock 


32 


FULFILLMENT 


she looked as fresh and sweet as a large pink 
rosebud. Brent felt a pride in her, half 
brotherly, half paternal, but he was too busy 
talking to Aline Armstrong to give Boblee the 
attention she usually demanded. 

Dr. Peter Tomlin, big, blunt, dark as a 
Spaniard, but American from his straight 
black hair to his huge, pigeon-toed feet, was 
the one person who showed any real appre¬ 
ciation of Boblee that night. It was he who 
said, with just the properly respectful in¬ 
flection : 

“Seems to me, young lady, that you’ve 
grown very old of a sudden. Haven’t you 
done something to your hair and your dress? 
I mean isn’t one higher and the other lower 
than I’ve seen ’em before?” 

Boblee chuckled and blushed. 

“It’s perfectly blessed of you to notice,” 
she confided. “Uncle Brent hasn’t even seen 
me to-night.” 

“Then he’s darned dull,” said Tomlin com¬ 
fortingly, and Boblee sighed, with feline ap¬ 
preciation at being smoothed the right way. 
She felt completely grown up. 

A Southerner by birth, though he had lived 
thirty years in New York, with a medical 
practice curiously divided between the slow- 
paying very rich and the unpaying poor, Peter 
Tomlin was a man whom a few greatly liked 
and a physician whom many trusted. 

He smiled at the girl now, with a flash of big 


FRANCES AND ALINE 33 


white teeth and an amnsed glint in his eyes, 
unexpectedly of a light hazel. His face re¬ 
minded you a little of the countenance of a big 
bulldog, but a bulldog with a sense of humor. 
He looked at Brent, then at the red-haired 
woman beside him, who seemed to be cleverly 
monopolizing the attention of both husband 
and wife. 

“How in Hades does she keep ’em both 
going?” Peter asked himself. Then he turned 
his attention to Boblee, and perceived some¬ 
thing a little like jealousy in the big generous 
child. Of course Brent had spoiled her, 
gloriously, ever since she had come to him, a 
little girl of nine, after the death of her father 
and mother. But Tomlin imagined that Fran¬ 
ces had never furthered the spoiling process. 

He elicited the tale of Roberta’s recent ad¬ 
ventures, and covered himself with distinction 
in her eyes by the fact that he happened to 
know Pat’s father extremely well. 

“So Congdon’s boy is the youngster re¬ 
sponsible for the tucked up hair, Boblee.” 

She twinkled back at him, and felt, not for the 
first time, that the doctor was always a solid 
comfort. After dinner the four older people 
played a cool and silent game of bridge and 
Boblee went regretfully up to do her lessons 
in the library. Older people were so queer, 
really alive one minute, and the next as dull 
as ditchwater. . . . But her new English 
teacher, Miss Diana Marlowe, insisted upon a 


34 


FULFILLMENT 


great deal of attention to her subject; like all 
other professors she apparently believed that 
hers was the one study of paramount im¬ 
portance. So Boblee immersed herself in 
“Silas Marner”—about whom she had a theme 
to write—and wondered irreverently why on 
earth people made so much fuss about such a 
stupid story. 

It was nearly half past eleven when she put 
out the light in the library and slipped up¬ 
stairs to bed. She had heard the front door 
close half an hour ago; apparently the bridge 
game was over and the Doctor gone home—he 
rarely stayed as late as eleven. Boblee won¬ 
dered whether the game, or the green frock and 
gleaming hair, had delayed him. In her heel¬ 
less tennis shoes she moved noiselessly, but 
she paused instinctively as she heard a voice 
quite near; apparently someone was in the 
lower hall. The words were spoken softly, in 
a clear feminine voice: 

“ Brent, you suppressed me rather neatly 
last night. But I am going to say it again— 
I’m sorry, and I understand! After all I’m 
very human myself, and I believe you are.” 

Roberta stole on up the stair, flushed with 
mortification over her inadvertent eavesdrop¬ 
ping yet puzzled by the words, and by Brent’s 
reply, in an odd voice, as though he were 
measuring each syllable: 

“My dear Aline, I never meant to suppress 
you. I couldn’t if I tried.” 


FRANCES AND ALINE 35 


They both laughed, and Aline came running 
up the stair. On the floor above, Boblee shut 
her own door very softly, but there was some¬ 
thing unusual, insidious, that she couldn’t shut 
out, a suggestion that things were not right 
with her Uncle Brent, that he was not quite 
happy. True, Boblee had thought this many 
times before. Fascinating as Frances seemed 
to this beauty-loving girl, she had always been 
lacking in the gaiety and warmth Boblee re¬ 
membered in her own mother. Aunt Frances 
was fond of them, she supposed, of Boblee her¬ 
self, and of Brent—but the girl had sometimes 
thought it a queer cool affection, and wondered 
why people were so different. 

Lying between her smooth linen sheets she 
thought of Brent, of his likeness to her father, 
and then of her father and mother together. 
She still remembered how gay they had been, 
romping together sometimes, like children, as 
Boblee had rarely seen grown people romp. 
Apparently happiness gave you back your 
childhood. At other times they had read 
aloud, or had argued hotly upon a hundred 
topics, or—and this Boblee remembered best 
of all—they had sat together, at twilight, in 
the great chair that had belonged to Grand¬ 
father Appleton. It always stayed in the big, 
square hall in the Gramercy Park house where 
Boblee was born, child of a Virginia mother 
and a father who was a native of New York. 

Someone rapped on the door, then Frances 


36 


FULFILLMENT 


came into the room, looking imperial in a 
gorgeous Mandarin coat. 

“Are you all right, dear!” she asked the girl, 
dropping into Boblee’s capacious sleepy hol¬ 
low chair. 

Boblee said that she was, and wished that 
Frances would sit on the bed and rumple her 
hair, wished that somehow they were nearer 
each other. And yet—well, often when Boblee 
had tried to know this lovely aunt a little better, 
she had been reminded of her childish ex¬ 
perience with a horsehair sofa. Aunt Frances 
was kind, she was wonderful to look at, but 
when you tried to get close you slid off! 

She said now: 

“I’m glad you had a good time with the Cong- 
dons, Roberta. They’re charming people: 
I’ve known Laura’s mother for years, and I 
was delighted when I found you were going to 
school with the daughter of my old friend.” 

Boblee knew that she ought to talk frankly 
about the most important and fascinating mem¬ 
ber of the family, Pat. And yet somehow it 
was hard to do it, with her aunt lying back in 
the low chair, smiling at her, and saying lazily: 

4 4 Well, you must go to sleep. And so must 
I. It’s late, and I have to get out early to¬ 
morrow, as early as you or Brent.” 

Boblee admired her aunt’s professional suc¬ 
cess. For a woman to make real money 
seemed to her dignified; she meant to do it 


FEANCES AND ALINE 37 


too, some day. But Pat still worried her, and 
she said at last: 

“You know, Aunt Frances, I like Pat as 
much as I do Laura. More I guess. And he 
was awfully nice to me, especially when you 
remember that he’s twenty-three!” 

Frances laughed at this, then her face grew 
grave and two little lines defined themselves 
upon her forehead. 

“Boberta, always remember what I’ve told 
you—to be dignified with young men and 
boys—never to allow them any—liberties. 
You understand?” 

“You mean—kissing?” said Boblee. Then 
she started to add: “But sometimes they don’t 
wait to be ‘allowed’,” and thought better of 
it. It was late and Aunt Frances was—pe¬ 
culiar. So she said instead, and in a de¬ 
ceptively sleepy voice: 

“I’ll remember, Auntie.” 

Frances rose, came nearer, leaned down and 
kissed Boblee lightly on her crimson cheek, the 
same sort of kiss she sometimes gave Brent, 
when she was sure that he wouldn’t—want 
things. 

But the girl, moved perhaps by a jealous 
memory of that new visitor talking to Brent 
on the stair, sat up and took her aunt into her 
warm strong arms—rather a bear-like grip. 

“Oh, Auntie Fran, I do love you—lots! 
You’re the most wonderful looking person in 


38 


FULFILLMENT 


all-New-York—like Arthur Rackham’s illus¬ 
trations of enchanted princesses!—only with 
more pep! But do you love us?” 

Frances disliked Rackham’s drawings and 
hated being squeezed so hard. She extri¬ 
cated herself with a little gasping laugh: 

“Boblee, you’re like a young cub! Don’t.” 
Then she added primly: “Of course I love 
you.” 

She was at the door, in the dim light a blue 
and gold Oriental princess; then the vision 
faded, she was gone. Boblee snuggled down 
under the covers a little sadly, and sentiment¬ 
ally wished that uncles came up to kiss you 
good night. 

Downstairs in the library Brent sat smoking, 
trying to conquer an irritating restlessness. 
On the stair just now he had had a vehement 
devilish desire to pick up that red-haired 
woman in the green frock and run off with her, 
away to some place where conventional shib¬ 
boleths and man-made codes need not inter¬ 
fere with primitive instincts. 

It had come so quickly, this realization— 
to-night, with other people in the room, and 
then, a few intimate moments in the library, 
and the parting on the stairs—that he had had 
to hold on to himself, as if he were a child 
afraid of the dark, fearful of some imagined 
bogie. He was being ridiculous, of course. 
Other men met these situations, and either 


FBANCES AND ALINE 39 


conquered them or discreetly and secretly 
yielded. But he was hampered by his habit 
of holding to his promises, even to such a one¬ 
sided bargain as this imitation marriage, and 
still more by his hatred of all the detestable 
paraphernalia of deceit forced upon the 
married man who has affairs with other 
women. 

If he could only ask Aline to go away with 
him, boldly, honestly, trusting that Frances 
would divorce him. . . . But when people do 
such things they want to be reasonably sure 
that passion will endure, that ij is worthy of 
a nobler name. After all, what did he and 
Aline know of each other? And then there 
was Boblee—if he messed up his life what 
would become of Boblee! Even supposing 
that Frances kept her, took real care of her, 
what would the child think of him! What 
would he do without her ? 

Brent covered the fire with ashes and went 
up to bed. He had a hard day ahead of him, 
a day full of other people’s problems; his own 
must wait. 


V 


Nothing conld have been more peaceful than 
those next few weeks in the quiet house on West 
Eleventh Street. The Autumn days bloomed 
like great golden flowers, each more perfect 
than the last. The city was at its best, es¬ 
pecially in the older residence streets, in the 
parks and squares, and along those still green 
stretches above the western boundary of opales¬ 
cent river. 

Yet among the hordes of visitors who seem 
to regard Manhattan as a sort of gigantic 
amusement park, many were still careful to 
modify any accidental praise of the city by 
repetition of an ancient platitude:—“But then 
of course I wouldn’t want to live here!” 

On the Avenue people in motors, and people 
walking, or crowding the alluring shops, had 
for the most part a festal mood. It was as 
though they had returned home, after a sum¬ 
mer spent in myriad resorts, just to revel in 
the crowding, perpetual movement from which 
they had so eagerly fled in the heavy heat of 
July. 

Brent still hoped for a week’s holiday, per¬ 
haps in some camp: Dr. Tomlin had a little 
place in New England where game abounded, 

40 


FRANCES AND ALINE 41 


with streams where trout hit in season, not 
too easily, and where one could forget offices 
and clients and querulous patients, and hear 
only the swift rush of the brook and the whis¬ 
pering of friendly trees. Pending this possi¬ 
bility of change and rest with the Doctor, 
Brent professed to be very busy at the office, 
and Frances complained that she had not seen 
so little of him in years, and that his continual 
absences were discourteous to her guest. 

However, Aline insisted that she wished to 
be treated as a member of the household, not 
as a guest, and actually it was Boblee who 
found herself more and more thrown with 
Frances’ friend. The two went frequently to 
the Saturday matinee, Brent getting the 
tickets; then Aline utilized Boblee as assistant 
explorer in strange neighborhoods where the 
search for the ever receding ideal apartment 
proved puzzling and disheartening. Together 
they found at last a little place near Stuyve- 
sant Square, cheerful and independent. To 
Boblee the pleasant living room, looking out on 
the green park, the tiny kitchen and small white 
bedroom, suggested a new doll-house where one 
might play at housekeeping. It was Boblee 
who had seen the advertisement of this par¬ 
ticular apartment, and when Aline had pro¬ 
claimed that it was just what she had been 
looking for, and that even the price was pos¬ 
sible, the girl felt flattered and thrilled. 

For by now Boblee had come to like her 


42 


FULFILLMENT 


aunt’s friend, to find in her that touch of mys¬ 
terious romance, more enchanting to youth 
than all the panoply of wisdom and virtue or 
even the magic wand of Midas. 

Mrs. Armstrong might not be rich, or as de¬ 
lightful to look at as Aunt Frances, or even 
young, as Boblee measured youth. But like 
Sentimental Tommy she had “a w’y” with her, 
and she possessed what to seventeen seems the 
sine qua non, masculine admirers, diversely de¬ 
scribed as suitors, lovers, beaux, followers, or 
crushes, the proper word depending upon one’s 
own age, class, and temperament. 

Boblee called them “Mrs. Armstrong’s 
trailers,” and the persons whom she so de¬ 
scribed were gentlemen of various ages, most 
of them birds of passage who “stopped over” 
in New York, apparently to call up Aline and 
ask her to tea, to dine, or to go to the theater. 
One of these, a tall young man from Detroit, 
Boblee thought “frightfully nippy,” and there 
was another from Salt Lake City whom she ad¬ 
mired because of his magnificent brown curly 
hair! The bald and the semi-bald seemed to 
this young critic an ever increasing menace to 
Romance. 

There was a third gentleman, indigenous to 
Manhattan, whom she cordially disliked, a 
portly stockbroker with peculiar hair—to Bob¬ 
lee it looked as though he had shampooed with 
shoe-blacking—and a disconcerting sense of hu¬ 
mor. She always felt that he was laughing at 


FRANCES AND ALINE 43 


her, and though he was described by Aline as 
prosperous, even rich, and clever in a paying, 
stockbrokerly fashion, the girl skirted the draw¬ 
ing room, when Mr. Cunningham called, as she 
might have circled warily some sinister forest 
peopled by warriors wielding tomahawks. 

To-day as they surveyed their find, Aline re¬ 
marked that Mr. Cunningham had told her that 
her ‘ 4 best bet” was the Stuyvesant Square 
neighborhood, and immediately all Boblee’s 
pride of discovery was quenched. Aline caught 
a glimpse of the girl’s face and laughed imp¬ 
ishly, putting a hand on Boblee’s shoulder, a 
little hand with several flashing rings. 

“You don’t like Mr. Cunningham, Boblee. 
But you will—when you find out what parties 
he can give! He has an apartment of his own, 
right on Bryant Park, and sometimes he gives 
little dinners that are like scenes on the stage, 
all low lights, and foreign looking ladies in 
Paris frocks. And he has a Japanese butler 
and a magnificent red and green parrot that 
swears splendidly, and says the Lord’s Prayer 
in Spanish.” 

Roberta Lee Appleton would not have been 
the eternal feminine if this description of Cun¬ 
ningham’s menage had not moved her, but she 
told herself that nothing in the world could 
make her like pudgy hands, or the way Mr. 
Cunningham looked at you. She did admit a 
sneaking desire to know more about the parrot, 
and Aline described his company manners and 


44 


FULFILLMENT 


the way he ate when he was allowed to come to 
the table. When they were in the street again, 
Aline now in search of the agent, she said with 
rather a curious little smile: 

1 ‘ Don’t yon think, Boblee, that you compare 
people too much with your own family—with 
your Aunt Frances and your Uncle Brent? 
I ’ll own that Mr. Cunningham does seem a little 
tame—when you remember Brent Appleton’s 
profile, and Ids hands, and the way his hair 
grows! But you see Jimmy can’t help it—his 
hair, and his aldermanic paunch—” 

Boblee laughed and protested that she had 
never said anything about Mr. Cunningham, 
and Aline retorted gaily: 

“It’s not what you say; it’s the way you 
look! Nobody but a blind man could have any 
doubts as to your opinion of poor old Jim. 
Later on you’ll learn that every woman needs 
a few homely plutocrats playing around. . . . 
They’re sometimes convenient.” 

Boblee had a swift vision of her Pat beside 
Cunningham of the unpleasant mouth and dyed 
hair. Then she decided that Mrs. Armstrong 
was spoofing her as usual. 

Out here in the sunshine they could see East 
Side children playing in the park, lean old men 
sitting on the benches, and swarthy Italian 
mothers holding their tiny dark babies hugged 
close against round breasts, under bright 
colored shawls. Boblee liked it all; but Aline 
shrugged her shoulders fastidiously and said 


FBANCES AND ALINE 45 


that thing; downtown had its disadvantages— 
when one couldn't afford to pay a decent rent. 
Yes. it was pietriresqne she supposed, at least 
better than Greenwich Tillage, . . . 

Suddenly, as a tail woman passed them, walk¬ 
ing swiftly. BoMee darted forward, with her 
ham oat and her eyes shroinst 

“Oh. Miss Marlowe, where did you come 
from! This is Aunt Frances ? friend, Mrs. 
Armstrong, and we're so happy because we Ve 

The two women smiled a^d shook hands. It 
appeared that Miss Marlowe had been visiting 
a friend of hers who was a patient in the great 
hospital close to Stnyvesant Square. 

“And she is getting well, so I hi happy too, 
Bofehge,” said the tall young woma n , the one 
teacher in the Maxwell School whom the girl 
adored without reservation. 


With a little nod she was zone. 


Line iio 

looked after her wistfaHy, 

4 4 She's splendid, but awfally basy. 


I Bob lee 


And 


Mrs. Antitrcm. her name is Ida 


Won 


fL*, 


nsv mat inclined her 


you know it. just to look at her !'' 

Aline feik a swxu* je 
to tease this absurd child. 

• * Moon goddess. or hunter, which is she. 
Bofclae! You remember the way the other 
Diana acted about — wasn't it Endymion! ” 

Bat the ycung enmnsiast refused to consider 
that ancient scandal She remarked dreamily: 
44 She’s not a bit like a teacher, but then she 














46 


FULFILLMENT 


isn’t only that. Yon see, she writes, verses and 
stories for magazines. Some day she is going 
to stop teaching and just write. Maybe she 
hasn’t got a lot of men crazy about her, like 
yon, Mrs. Armstrong. And she isn’t so beau¬ 
tiful she hurts —like Aunt Frances at the opera. 
But I think she has what the French call 
‘esprit,’ and, except for Uncle Brent, she’s the 
one person in the world I’d like being wrecked 
on a desert island with—even if we were never 
rescued!” 

At the house on Eleventh Street Brent met 
them at the door, home for dinner for the first 
time in weeks. Boblee took possession of him 
at once, describing the new apartment, while 
Aline slipped upstairs to dress. Frances had 
gone to Morristown again; with Boblee back, 
she had announced that she might spend the 
night this time, since there was so much to dis¬ 
cuss with her new clients. So the girl might 
have to chaperon Mrs. Armstrong and Uncle 
Brent—a thrilling idea! 

Upstairs Aline slipped into a pale frock of 
chiffon the color of driftwood flames. Down in 
the hall Brent and Boblee sat together in the 
old leather chair, exchanging the news of school 
and office, until the maid came out and sounded 
the Chinese dinner gong under their very noses. 

Brent was conscious all that evening of an 
unwilling admiration for his wife, for her com¬ 
bination of a naive lack of suspicion with some 
quality he supposed must be the passivity of 


FRANCES AND ALINE 47 


natures lacking passionate feeling. It was 
apparent that she never even considered the 
possibility of another woman’s proffering him 
what she was incapable of giving, feeling for 
him what she herself had never felt for any 
man. Yet jealousy was not wholly foreign to 
her nature. Brent was occasionally conscious 
that she found his amusement and absorption 
in Roberta irritating. After all, Boblee was 
still a child, and Frances could never under¬ 
stand any mature person liking to give time 
and attention to the very young. 

You did your duty by children, of course; you 
enjoyed their frolicsome, puppy-like qualities, 
their rather ridiculous spontaneity; you were 
proud of their prettiness or of their touches of 
unexpected cleverness. But to respect their 
mental processes, to be interested in their half 
baked thoughts and opinions, their individual 
reactions to life, this attitude Frances failed to 
understand. Fond as she really was of Ro¬ 
berta, much as she enjoyed the girl’s intense 
admiration, she was conscious of a puzzled feel¬ 
ing of disappointment, even of depression, 
when Brent at times showed more concern for 
Boblee’s experiences at school, her interest in 
his friends and even in his work, than he 
seemed to take in Frances’ professional devel¬ 
opment or her social contacts. 

Brent knew these things; during the last few 
years he had become increasingly conscious of 
his wife’s lack of imagination, of her self- 


48 


FULFILLMENT 


centered ingrowing mind, while at the same time 
he realized her artistic facility. He saw, too, 
that in her nnlikeness to himself, in her very 
subnormality, she might be destined to suffer 
as truly as he had suffered from starvation of 
both sense and spirit. To-night, with Boblee to 
play propriety and Aline as a sure and ex¬ 
quisite magnet, he felt the irony of the situ¬ 
ation. Frances’ ignorance of human nature 
was appalling! 

All that evening Boblee wondered why Brent 
was so quiet, so lacking in the responsiveness 
he showed when they were alone together. She 
asked herself whether, after all, he really dis¬ 
liked Mrs. Armstrong, and why. Dinner over, 
the girl announced to that rather quiet pair 
that she had school work to do, and that if 
Mrs. Armstrong would excuse her she would go 
up to the library where she often studied. 

Aline glanced at Brent, then smiled into her 
coffee cup. Would he evade the situation, have 
a business engagement? But no, they were 
presently in the drawing room, Brent lighting 
the fire and the sound of Boblee’s footsteps 
dying away upon the stair. 

The master of the house drew up to the cheer¬ 
ful blaze a cushioned seat which faced the 
hearth, placed his guest comfortably, and then 
stood with his back to the mantel, his pipe be¬ 
tween his teeth, looking down at her. 

“Well?” he said inquiringly, “what is it to 
be, our talk to-night? About your love affairs, 


FRANCES AND ALINE 49 


in which Boblee is so intensely interested? Or 
my dull office? Or the world at large?” 

“The sole topic in which I’m interested just 
now is apartments,” said Aline. “Did Boblee 
tell you that she found just the thing I 
wanted ? ’’ 

“She told me of the discovery, not of her 
part in it,” said Brent. “She seemed to think 
that Mr. Cunningham had something to do with 
your success, that he had sent you to the house, 
or the agent.” 

Aline laughed, that odd laugh of hers which 
so often puzzled Boblee. She was a woman 
who enjoyed a touch of jealousy where she was 
concerned, even in children or animals. 

“She detests Mr. Cunningham, your Boblee. 
I’m afraid she’s a bit possessive—likes her 
friends to herself.” 

Brent shook his head. “I don’t think so— 
but anyhow she wouldn’t detest a man for that 
reason. I’ve never seen a judge more capable 
of impartial justice than Boblee. And her in¬ 
stincts are extraordinarily true. If she detests 
this gentleman I’d probably dislike him my¬ 
self—unless by any chance he’s fat! The in¬ 
fant’s scorn for heavyweights amounts to a 
mania.” 

Aline looked and felt a trifle irritated. 

“He’s certainly not thin—but, as I told her, 
every man can’t be as satisfactory to look at as 
her Honorable Uncle.” 

Brent ignored this rather disconcertingly. 


50 


FULFILLMENT 


“I suppose lie’s in love with yon, and that he 
would be regarded as eligible. Why don’t you 
marry him, Aline? I don’t know any woman 
who could spend money more effectively.” 

She flashed him a look, a blend of irritation 
and challenge, then lazily straightened a some¬ 
what tipsy andiron with her foot. Brent noted 
the action, and also the delicate ankle, the slim 
leg in its white silk stocking, the flowing lines 
of the young figure in its close-fitting, gleaming 
frock. He hardly heard her reply, his attention 
being given to meeting an alluring temptation 
with what stoicism he could command. When 
he caught the sense of her words she was 
saying: 

“—but. you see, an experience of marriage 
not too happy makes a woman cautious. Now 
that I’m free I’m playing safe—making my 
moves carefully. I haven’t much money, but 
it’s enough. I shan’t tie myself to any man 
without feeling sure that I’m exchanging my 
freedom for something I want more—some¬ 
thing worth while—” 

“Just what is worth while? What do you 
want from marriage?” 

She met his eyes; sudden daring flamed into 
quick speech: 

“I want what you want, Brent, what every 
normal person wants: companionship plus 
emotion—I suppose what Wells would call a 
‘passionate friendship.’ ” 

Brent was conscious of surprise. Here was 


FRANCES AND ALINE 51 


finer quality than he had perceived. As thongh 
she had followed his thoughts she said gently: 

“I wonder, Brent, whether yon'll understand 
—I want feeling — excitement — and at the same 
time a love that will last. — Which of course 
is exactly like saying that I want the universe.” 

She lay back in her low seat, and Brent met 
her sparkling eyes. He felt as eager and in¬ 
experienced as any boy, conscious that his habit 
of turning his back upon danger had not pre¬ 
pared him for moments like this. Illogically he 
had a swift, bitter regret, — that Frances had 
failed him, that through her he had not tasted 
happiness so keen that other women would lack 
the power to stir him. . . . Again Aline seemed 
to phrase his very thought. She had risen and 
was standing by his side: 

4 4 Brent, it’s Frances — if she had made you 
happy you'd never have seen me. But oh, 
Brent, my dear, you ’re not happy. We’ve both 
missed — everything! ” 

Brent never knew which of them took that 
forward step; their first embrace tingled 
through him like hot spirit. The woman 
seemed at once a kindled flame and a cool 
spring, refreshing his parched lips. . . . He 
forgot Frances, forgot Boblee, forgot all those 
inhibitions of habit and code, his deep rooted 
antipathy to things secret and furtive. 

He found himself at last on the settle before 
the fire, with A lin e’s slender bare arms about 
his neck. Life — full of promise and youth and 


52 


FULFILLMENT 


joy—seemed calling him like a trumpet! He 
heard himself saying: 

“Alino, you can’t play with me! It’s all or 
nothing—I’m starved, sick of pretense and 
make-believe. To-night I’m a brute—selfish, 
lonely. . . . The years owe me a debt that any 
woman who cares for me will have to pay. . . .” 

The room seemed suddenly very still. He 
was conscious of the distant hum of the city, 
then of a coal dropping upon the hearth. All 
in him that was primitive and male waited 
breathlessly for her answer; he was unaware 
that not once had he told Aline that he loved 
her, or asked for her love. His immediate need 
went deeper than civilization, deeper than 
modern theories and ideals concerning men and 
women and their mating; its roots were in the 
far past, in that strange surplusage of passion 
because of which the race itself has survived a 
thousand perils, perils of asceticism as well as 
of license. 

At last he had her reply. She had moved 
away, but her lovely arrested pose, her thin 
face and red lips, were all provocative. She 
spoke in a voice that ran through him like the 
appeal of sensuous music: 

“I’m not playing, Brent! I couldn’t if I 
would—with you. ...” 

He caught her two hands. 

“You’ve been married. You know some¬ 
thing about men and life. Do you realize that 
this is just—the beginning?” 


FRANCES AND ALINE 53 


“Yes, Brent.” 

Her color deepened, but in a moment she was 
laughing at him, or at herself, and the sound 
was like the gay, teasing mockery of a child. 
It reminded Brent of Boblee upstairs, studying 
her lessons. He said more casually: 

“Aline, when do you get into that apartment 
of yours?” 

“In a week, perhaps. Not longer.” 

He went back to the immemorial male posi¬ 
tion before the fire, and took up his pipe. Bob¬ 
lee came down to say good night at half past 
ten; she found her uncle reading aloud from a 
plum-colored book that she knew, a book of 
verse. She noticed that he kissed her on the 
cheek, that he and Mrs. Armstrong seemed 
rather quiet, and that the fire was full of 
pictures, the flames vari-colored, like that fas¬ 
cinating dress of Aline’s. She hated to go to 
bed, but a few days ago she had promised 
Frances to be in bed by eleven, so she reluc¬ 
tantly departed, and Aline said that she too 
would be up in a few minutes. Half an hour 
later the girl was asleep, her arm above her 
head, her thick dark brown hair loose on the 
pillow, her cheeks a deep soft pink. She was 
dreaming about Pat and herself in the garden 
at New Rochelle, under the cherry tree. But 
just as Pat was saying something wonderful, 
about the way she looked, and the way he felt— 
a big green toad hopped across the grass and 
up into Boblee’s lap, and she woke herself by 


54 


FULFILLMENT 


leaping from bed with a cry that brought Brent 
upstairs on the run. 

“What on earth’s the matter, child?” 

She stumbled to the door, looking up at him 
with sleepy dark eyes. 

“Just a dream, Uncle Brent, about a clammy 
green toad that jumped into my lap. Pat was 
in the dream too.” 

Brent put his arm around her, kissed first one 
cheek, then the other. “Dreams about hand¬ 
some young men are barred for at least two 
years more, Boblee. But I’d cut toads out for¬ 
ever if I were you. ’ ’ 

Downstairs Aline still sat by the fire, and 
Brent answered her question rather shortly: 
“Just a nightmare. She’s all right now.” 

Aline caught the implication of his tone. 
Boberta’s presence was useful yet awkward; it 
was absurd the way Brent spoiled the child. 
. . . Still this was Frances’ house, and the 
whole situation was difficult. . . . For a long 
time she sat quite still, staring at the flames, 
and Brent smoked his pipe as though smoking 
it were some sacred rite. At last Aline got 
slowly to her feet. 

“Time for me to go too,” she said. 

Brent did not move. When he spoke his 
voice was wooden and spiritless. 

“Aline, you must count the cost—before it’s 
too late. I don’t see that there’s much in this 
for you—an affair with a married man. And 


FRANCES AND ALINE 55 


I don’t want to take advantage—to trade on 
your sympathy.” 

She stood motionless, her hair gleaming in 
the firelight, her light delicate figure in its drift¬ 
wood-flame frock curiously eloquent, as though 
the lovely body of her spoke what her lips 
could not say. At last she lifted her arms, one 
slight, swift gesture, and Brent moved toward 
her. For a long time not a word was spoken; 
the house was still, the fire died down, the 
street noises, came vaguely to their ears, like 
muffled memories of some alien world. 

Yet even then Brent found himself wonder¬ 
ing whether this storm of feeling meant what is 
called love or some wilder, cruder emotion. . . . 
Aline lifted her face to his, and her kiss seemed 
to blot out memory and regret and the barren 
years behind him. . . . 


VI 


Boblee found the next week exciting, and 
more than usually entertaining. At school 
Miss Marlowe continued to demand an ex¬ 
traordinary amount of attention to English, 
and Boblee was beginning to divine some 
of the treasure which in the end rewards 
the seeker after truth. Until recently words 
had been merely words for her; they repre¬ 
sented ideas, to be sure, but of themselves were 
neither attractive nor repellent, had neither in¬ 
dividual beauty nor tonal significance. Now, 
under the tutelage of a young woman to whom 
the English language was an amazing and vary¬ 
ing adventure, the class was beginning to wake 
up to the mystery of style, beginning to recog¬ 
nize, beyond the interest of plot, that manner 
of telling which varies as people themselves 
vary, in form, color and ancestry. 

About this time Boblee wrote an essay which 
Miss Marlowe called ‘ 4 crudely iconoclastic, but 
at least original,” and Boblee went round with 
an air of exaltation in spite of her secret con¬ 
sciousness that she had not yet looked up “icon¬ 
oclastic” in the dictionary. . . . That same 
week the girl saw something new and different 
about Brent. He seemed younger, more alive, 
busier than ever at the office, yet for some 

56 


FRANCES AND ALINE 57 


reason a more alluring uncle than she remem¬ 
bered in years—in fact since those happy 
Sundays when she was still a little girl and 
they had spent many hours in the Bronx Zoo. 

It was this same week that Aline moved into 
her new flat, and on Saturday Boblee spent 
some time unpacking books with a sense of im¬ 
portant achievement. 

It was while she was busy with a shelf of 
miscellaneous novels, working with thorough¬ 
ness and the book lover’s keen interest, that she 
heard Brent’s voice in the hall, and then 
Aline’s, light and gay: 

4 4 Hello, Brent. Boblee’s here, helping me 
out. You can hang the large picture, if you 
don’t mind.” 

Boblee, staggering under the weight of an 
armful of books, had a disconcerting impression 
that somehow her uncle was not pleased to hear 
of her presence. Then, after a moment with 
Aline in the 44 foyer,” as the real estate man 
had elegantly described it, Brent came into the 
sitting room, where he contemplated Boblee’s 
work, and pronounced it good. 

4 4 You seem attentive to the color scheme as 
well as to the authors,” he remarked. 44 Which 
your Aunt Frances would entirely approve.” 

Boblee patted 44 Modeste Mignon” into place 
and recognized again that new something about 
Brent, an effect of seeming younger and more 
alert, even dressed with more attention to de¬ 
tail. Now that he was in the room, smiling at 


58 


FULFILLMENT 


her with his blue eyes, she told herself that she 
must have imagined the change in his voice 
just now. Of course he was glad to see her: 
he always was. In her entire world there was 
nothing so secure as her conviction of his af¬ 
fection for her. She looked at him now with 
the brown eyes so like his own in shape, a little 
smile on her curved mouth. Aline had gone 
into the bedroom to superintend the scrubbing 
of a forgotten closet by a newly selected clean¬ 
ing woman, so Boblee went over to Brent and 
rubbed her shoulder against his in a puppyish 
fashion that he had always laughed at—and 
liked. 

“I haven’t seen you for so long, old Busy 
Thing, that I Ve had time to finish growing up, ’ ’ 
she said. Whereupon Brent brushed her cheek 
with his hand to see whether the paint would 
come off. It didn’t, and they laughed at the 
aged joke. Boblee confided to him that she had 
a box of real rouge now, so she could put it on 
if she ever needed to. . . . 4 ‘And oh, Brent, 
Diana says my last theme’s ‘original’—and 
that some day I really may learn to write—if 
I’ll ‘economize on adverbs and adjectives and 
exclamation points.’ ” 

“Diana!—Do you call your Honorable Eng¬ 
lish Professor by her first name?” said Brent. 

Boblap chuckled. “Not where she can hear 
me, yol’d better believe! But we all do it— 
behind their backs—when we like ’em. It’s 
only the old grumps and frumps that we always 


FRANCES AND ALINE 59 


call Miss or Mrs. And oh, Brent, I want you 
to meet her—she’s the loveliest thing!” 

Brent made a gesture of refusal. 

“My dear infant, I know too many 1 loveliest 
things ’ already—more than I have time to en¬ 
joy. But I came here to hang pictures and 
drive nails. I must get to work.” 

Aline appeared with picture wire and hooks, 
and for the next hour the three were busy evok¬ 
ing order out of chaos. At four-thirty Boblee 
had an engagement to meet Pat Congdon at 
home: Aunt Frances had given her permission 
to go to tea with him at the Plaza, and Boblee 
fled at five minutes past four, leaving her Uncle 
on a stepladder, with Aline, in a short skirt and 
a cornflower silk blouse, directing the hanging 
of a round gilt-framed Florentine Madonna 
that Boblee secretly considered “a sight,” the 
mother being “cow-eyed” and the baby far too 
fat for her ideal of infantile beauty. 

When the girl’s footsteps could he heard no 
longer and the Madonna hung serene and con¬ 
templative in her place, Aline dropped upon the 
couch between two high windows and said 
lazily : 

“Brent, I’m tired. Stop a moment and talk 
to me.” 

Brent straightened the Madonna and picked 
up Boblee’s handkerchief, with “R. L. A.” em¬ 
broidered in the corner by Frances’ clever 
needle. He felt a tingling excitement mixed 
with something like regret. 


60 


FULFILLMENT 


The cleaning woman, employed by the hour, 
had departed; the front door was closed; and 
the two faced each other at last, aware of an 
acute embarrassment which seemed to spring 
from Boblee’s complete innocence and good 
faith. 

Brent sat down in a wide-armed, man-sized 
chair and looked about the bright feminine 
room with its air of luxury. Among its tones 
of russet and old blue, Aline, with her red hair, 
her delicate skin, the blue blouse and gray- 
blue skirt, seemed an essential part of the color 
scheme, all of which Brent observed and rather 
neatly phrased. 

She looked at him lazily from the couch, very 
slim, almost childlike in her short skirt, white 
silk stockings, and little strapped slippers. 

4 ‘ Brent, that’s a very pretty speech. And 
having you here is rather nice—and natural,” 
she said, slowly. 

Yet he wished that he could forget Boblee’s 
cool cheek against his hand, her wide brown 
eyes, that little way she had of making him feel 
her conviction that everything he did was right, 
even inevitable. And then sharp realization 
of being at last a normal man, face to face with 
a woman who cared for him in the way women 
have cared for men from the beginning, blotted 
out everything but the vivid moment, bringing 
him to his feet, and to Aline’s side. 

She was light; lifting her was like lifting a 
child; touching the satin smoothness of her 


FRANCES AND ALINE 61 


cheek and throat was a subtle indescribable 
intoxication. . . . 

They sat very still, very close, not speaking 
or moving for a long time. To Brent the swift 
moments were like an incoming tide, gradually 
sweeping him off his feet, floating him upon a 
sea of sensation like nothing he had experienced 
in his years of loneliness and starved emotion. 


711 


Afternoon tea at a hotel may hardly seem to 
mature persons a fascinating and entrancing 
adventure, yet to Boblee the simple proceeding 
savored of magic as she sat at a little table op¬ 
posite Pat, in an embrasure close to a window 
from which one could see the Plaza fountain 
sparkling and the whole pageant of the City 
passing by. 

“You don’t mind pouring V y said Pat. 

Boblee didn’t mind, and she discovered that 
Pat took two lumps and lemon, and that he liked 
English muffins as much as she did, and grape¬ 
fruit marmalade and likewise cinnamon toast. 
Pat was a big fellow, straight and tall, with 
broad shoulders and lean hips, rather like a 
vigorous Greek youth tying his sandal, in the 
Museum, whom Boblee especially admired. 
She liked the way Pat’s mouth corners curled 
up, the decisive Romanesque sweep of his nose, 
and the strong column of his sunburnt neck. 
Also he was well groomed, without giving the 
effect of masculine vanity which she hated. 
Moreover he looked at her in a fashion that 
seventeen finds irresistible, as though she were 
not a child but a woman. 

He said now, with a tact many older men 
might have emulated: 

62 


FEANCES AND ALINE 63 


“ You know, Boblee, that hat of yours is great 
—the way it curls around your face and lets 
your hair peep out. And the color of it and 
your dress—not red exactly—is awfully chic, 
with your hair and eyes—” 

“Henna,” said Boblee. “Aunt Frances 
chose it. And she has a feel for colors and 
clothes. People always like things she buys 
me.” 

“She’s a queen herself,” said Pat. “I 
heard Mother telling some fat dowager the 
other day that Mrs. Brent Appleton was the 
handsomest woman in New York. ’ ’ He paused, 
then added awkwardly: “But somehow I 
don’t feel that I know her very well.” 

Boblee nodded: “I know what you mean. 
She looks awfully modern and stylish, and 
young, too. But Uncle Brent said once that 
she really belonged to her grandmother’s gener¬ 
ation—he called it the vintage of 1860! She 
did look lovely in hoops, and one of those little 
low necked basques, when she dressed up in 
some of her grandmother’s clothes. And some¬ 
times I’ve felt that she was like that inside— 
things she says, and—” 

“And what?” said Pat. 

“The way she kisses you,” said Boblee 
simply. “I don’t think she quite approves of 
kissing. And of course she doesn’t approve of 
us at all—the younger generation. Last sum¬ 
mer at the seashore she thought the dancing 
was dreadful.” 


64 


FULFILLMENT 


Pat chuckled. 

“She would. And it probably was. There 
are fellows I'd hate to see you dance with, Bob- 
lee. And girls—well, I'm glad you'd rather 
shin up an apple tree than sit in corners and 
spoon or go to petting parties." 

Boblee flushed and then laughed. 

“Oh, I don't know! There are some awfully 
nice girls at school who do, Pat. And I like 
this better than even apple trees—all these peo¬ 
ple at the little tables—that girl with golden 
hair in the hat with the green feather—the way 
she laughs—and the black haired girl's young 
man: he looks like ‘The Fortunate Youth.' 
And that little old lady in gray belongs in a 
fairy book I used to adore." 

“But the man the yellow haired girl's with 
—you don't like him, do you?" 

“Of course not. He's fat,” said Boblee. 

“He's worse than fat," Pat remarked. 
“And anyway you belong in the apple-tree 
rather than the afternoon-tea class. You 
should be playing tennis, or climbing moun¬ 
tains, or sailing boats! When I think of you I 
always see you outdoors, not here in town, sur¬ 
rounded by streets and hotels and fat lounge 
lizards! If you could choose you'd take the 
country, wouldn't you?" 

Boblee drank her tea and considered. 

“If I'd finished school and Uncle Brent didn't 
mind commuting I suppose I'd think it rather 


FRANCES AND ALINE 65 


fine—to live somewhere in Westchester, or in 
Short Hills, or Morristown. I do like tennis, 
and not having to wear a hat all the year 
around instead of for three months. But I 
love the city too—the fountain in the Plaza, 
and Fame and Sherman, and that new tower, 
with Chanticleer on top—and Broadway at 
night.’’ 

Pat handed her the muffins and moved his 
chair the fraction of an inch, so that he need 
no longer see the 6 ‘worse than fat” man’s close 
shaven chin and mean eyes. 

“How’d you like traveling, Boblee—not the 
temporary lady-like kind, ‘ seeing America first’ 
and doing Italy—but chasing over the world 
with, say a Naval Officer husband—living 
in eight or ten places in two or three years!— 
always packing and unpacking, no real home- 
all your clothes years behind the style, all your 
friends deserted just as soon’s they’re made!” 

“I’d hate it!” said Boblee promptly. “I’ll 
never marry a naval officer, or an aviator, or a 
drummer! ’ ’ 

There was a queer silence; Boblee saw a new 
look in Pat’s gray-green eyes. They had 
finished tea, and he suggested that they go 
across to the park and walk uptown as far as 
they liked, coming home on the bus in time 
for dinner at half past seven. In ten minutes 
they were racing along an uphill path, trees of 
flaming red and gleaming yellow above their 


66 


FULFILLMENT 


heads. The day was cooling from Indian sum¬ 
mer warmth to autumnal chill, and in the 
rapidly falling dusk they sprinted like college 
runners, the tall girl and the taller boy, color 
in their cheeks, wind in their hair. Later, com¬ 
ing down the Avenue on top of the bus, Boblee 
felt Pat’s arm about her, and wondered at her¬ 
self for not reproving him. Aunt Frances 
would certainly disapprove if she could see 
them, in spite of which Boblee sat perfectly still 
and leaned against the arm. She was tasting 
that delicious flavor of adult adventure she 
had been savoring all the afternoon. And then 
Pat said something in a voice with a sharp 
edge that made her feel at least twenty! 

“Did you ever think, Boblee, that a Civil 
Engineer, after he’s through his training, 
spends years hiking over the country? This 
time next fall I’ll probably be in Wyoming, or 
Washington, or Mexico—while you’re riding on 
this old bus with some other fellow. ...” 

It was incredible, the way a shining day could 
suddenly become gray and lonesome. . . . Bob¬ 
lee felt as though the world had abruptly 
stopped revolving on its axis. . . . Without Pat 
life would be unbearably dull, and yet of course 
she mustn’t let him know the way she felt! 
She heard herself make some flippant remark, 
something about the girls he would be playing 
about with—the ancient thrust at sailors who 
have sweethearts in every port. She wondered 
at her own callous air and cheerful voice. 


FRANCES AND ALINE 67 


Then she knew that Pat had taken away his 
arm. He was saying in a low voice that shook 
a little: 

“Boblee, you’re too young—I oughtn’t to say 
things to you—I know that! But—well, some 
people do find each other sooner . . . begin 
younger. Lots of Annapolis and West Point 
men are married the very day they graduate. 
And though you’re still a baby, I’m twenty- 
three, old enough to know what I want—which 
happens to be—just you —Boblee.” 

She couldn’t see the splendid Chanticleer 
tower . . . her eyes were wet ... oh, but it 
was a magical world! And she wasn’t so 
young after all—in a little over a month she 
would be eighteen. She turned her head the 
tiniest bit; Pat could see her profile now, in¬ 
stead of just her cloudy hair and henna hat— 
could see her red mouth, and round chin, for 
the moment tremulous. He continued in that 
shaky boyish voice: 

“I’m not asking anything, Boblee. It’s not 
fair, to ask a girl to be engaged to you, when 
she’s only seventeen. But I want you to know 
the way I feel—and have felt for nearly a year 
—that no other girl counts, or ever will. . . . 
And that a lot of silly rotten things fellows do 
just don’t interest me—because of you. And 
of course if you could feel that way about 
me— ’ ’ 

Boblee saw the lovely fagade of Saint 
Thomas’ Church with a distinct feeling of re- 


68 


FULFILLMENT 


lief. Anyhow she wasn’t going to weep, like an 
idiotic baby. She heard herself say, quietly 
and very distinctly: 

“I do, Pat, truly. ...” 

The bus lurched on, and nothing more was 
said for a mile or more. Then the boy’s hand 
closed over Boblee’s and he said gently: 

“We won’t talk about it, to anyone. They’d 
laugh at us—call it calf love—but we know that 
it isn’t. ...” 

“Yes,” said Boblee, “we know.” 

When they reached Eleventh Street it was 
after half past seven, and the maid who opened 
the door said that Mrs. Appleton wanted Mr. 
Pat to come in and get his dinner. 

“I can’t,” said Pat. “Have an engage¬ 
ment.” Then as the maid disappeared and 
Boblee hung her hat up and slipped out of her 
coat, the boy took her cold slim hand and laid 
it against his cheek. 

“Good night, dear.” 

Boblee’s face burned, her big eyes glowed. 
She stood tall and straight beside him; they 
looked into each other’s eyes, held each other’s 
hands for a long moment. Then Pat was gone, 
slamming the door after him. Boblee glanced 
at herself in the glass and wondered whether 
Uncle Brent could read her telltale cheeks. 
Then she absurdly kissed her own hand, and 
laughed suddenly, a low gay chuckle that no¬ 
body heard. She went in to dinner, and five 
minutes later Brent appeared. 


FRANCES AND ALINE 69 


“You’re even later than I am,” said Boblee. 
“Did yon get all the pictures hung?” 

“Every last one,” bragged Brent. “And 
did you drink all your tea?” 

Frances chided them both, and then told 
Brent of a new client at the studio in search of 
someone to decorate a clubhouse in Morris¬ 
town. She was excited, and immensely pleased 
by the impression her studio had made upon her 
visitor, pleased too at the progress of the work 
for the country house. Then she asked about 
Aline’s apartment, which she had not yet seen, 
and inquired of Boblee how Pat had liked the 
henna hat. 

Boblee noticed that nobody ate much dinner, 
and wondered how Julia in the kitchen would 
regard their neglect of a delicious apple and 
raisin pudding with wine sauce. . . . She was 
curiously indifferent to the preparation of her 
lessons for to-morrow, but after their coffee 
she and Brent raced each other to the library, 
making as much noise as a cavalcade of horses, 
Frances declared. 


VIII 


Brent and Boblee walked to the subway to¬ 
gether the next morning, Boblee bound for her 
uptown school, against the traffic, Brent for 
Wall Street. It was early November now; 
the city was crisp and cool, yet not cold, 
still touched by that Indian Summer glamour 
that seemed to Brent the loveliest mood of the 
year. This morning he was more than ever 
conscious of the tang in the air, of the delicate 
haze through which New York’s tall towers 
look their alluring best, and also of the bloom 
on the cheek beside him, a bloom more sug¬ 
gestive of budding womanhood than of child¬ 
hood, he realized regretfully. 

“Boblee, you’re deceiving us,” he said 
crisply, as they paused on the corner where 
they always parted in order to catch their re¬ 
spective trains. 

Big, red cheeked, with her loose curves of 
gleaming brown hair under the little hat shaped 
like a crescent moon, Boblee touched his arm 
with her ungloved hand, not laughing at his 
solemn face. There was a self-conscious look 
in the frank brown eyes. 

“What do you mean, Uncle Brent?” 

“You’re growing up,” said Brent, “and 

70 


FKANCES AND ALINE 71 


you’ve promised not to, promised to keep all 
your foolish puppy ways. I don't like it." 

Boblee hesitated for an instant, then tagged 
along to Brent’s corner instead of making for 
her own. 

“Brent, I’m ’fraid I am—just can’t help it, 
you know. And I want to know something 
... if you don’t do a thing, but just want to, is 
it dishonorable to keep your wanting to 
yourself?” 

“How on earth can I answer such a cryptic 
speech, knowing nothing of what’s back of it?” 
Brent parried. 

He spoke lightly, but her question was as 
sudden and disturbing as the sharp sting of a 
hornet. 

They stood close to the downtown subway 
stair, the girl shining-eyed, eager, her height 
making her seem older than she was; yet her 
face was wistful. For twenty-four hours she 
had been wanting her mother rather dread¬ 
fully. None of the substitutes seemed satis¬ 
factory. 

“I mean—it’s Aunt Frances. She’s awfully 
good to me, but I don’t always tell her things— 
feelings—and about people. Oh, you know, 
TJnc’ Brent! Ought I to—just because she 
thinks I do. . . .” 

Brent forced his mind away from his own 
thoughts of Frances, and remembered the Cong- 
don boy, the tea-party yesterday. He was a 
nice straight kid . . . probably he had wanted 


72 


FULFILLMENT 


to kiss Boblee, to hold her hand . . . poor in¬ 
fants, with their problems all ahead. . . . He 
patted Boblee ’s shoulder, and suddenly remem¬ 
bered a client already due at the office. 

“I must run, kiddo. Tell her the things you 
do—but what you think, and don’t do, is no¬ 
body’s business. Save up all the puzzles and 
we’ll talk ’em out, later. ...” 

Roberta pinched his arm with a little gasp 
of relief. Talking intimately to Aunt Frances 
was the hardest thing she did, except geometry. 
Now Brent was absolving her from that difficult 
duty. Her face was radiant, her laugh a child¬ 
ish chuckle that brought a reluctant smile to 
the face of a rheumatic old man, also subway- 
bound. 

1 ‘ Thanks, old-Uncle-Thing! Now hurry, runl 
Don’t be late and blame me. ...” 

She disappeared and Brent plunged into the 
crowd submerging itself below the sunny street. 
But he did not read his newspaper, though he 
had mechanically accepted it and paid the red¬ 
headed lame boy on the street level, as usual. 
Standing on the platform, as the train swayed 
and lurched office-ward, he found himself sur¬ 
veying his own record in the light of Boblee’s 
question— “ Ought I to tell her things because 
she thinks I do V ’—the code of a sincerity pain¬ 
ful and distinctly inconvenient. Yet crooked 
paths do not always prove thorny. . . . Last 
night Brent had slept soundly, to wake with a 
vigorous feeling of health and youth, rested 


FRANCES AND ALINE 7a 


nerves and a freshened interest in life. He had 
been quite without dread of future complica¬ 
tions, or remorse, so far as Frances was con¬ 
cerned. After all, in the accepted sense of the 
term, Frances was not a wife at all; how could 
women of her temperament and outlook expect 
to hold what they neither valued nor under¬ 
stood? As to Aline, some subtle suggestion of 
experience about her—one never forgot that 
she had been married—prevented his blaming 
himself for what would have seemed the action 
of a cad had she been an inexperienced girl, 
however rash or passionate. 

Like the majority of his sex—and despite his 
dislike for the usual male attitude toward the 
jjrofessional, the “paid” woman,—Brent drew 
a hard and fast line between “women” and 
“girls”: decent men were bound to protect the 
latter, but with the former a man stood on even 
ground. And all these years his own past had 
been untouched by intrigue or promiscuity. 
Since his marriage to Frances he had avoided 
the type of woman who suggests temptation; 
Frances herself had thrown him with Aline, 
otherwise he might never have known her, save 
in the most formal fashion, as he knew many 
attractive women. And before his marriage— 
but Brent refused even mentally to re-live those 
earlier years. Neither Frances, nor Aline, sug¬ 
gested in any way that unformulated, delicate 
loveliness he had known and boyishly wor¬ 
shiped in first youth, as unlike actual life, the 


74 


FULFILLMENT 


life Brent had known, as the mental experience 
of some young Shelley or Keats is unlike the 
common lot of callous, unimaginative men who 
are not poets. . . . 

At the office that morning he had an inter¬ 
view scheduled with one of the most interesting 
clients he had ever handled, a boyish-looking 
business man with a gentle, agreeable manner 
and a hard, clear, practical head. Barely 
thirty, Pierce Conway had already built up a 
flourishing business which promised in a few 
years to assume colossal proportions. Brent 
had known him for five years, had watched his 
progress, and marveled at the combination of 
native shrewdness, capacity to utilize other 
men’s brains for his own profit, and the youth¬ 
ful, friendly approach that enabled him to win 
the confidence of hard-headed men of affairs 
many years older than himself. In effect he 
was the sort of person usually represented in 
fiction as hawk-nosed, lynx-eyed, callous, and 
mature; whereas any woman, seeing Conway at 
some social function, or in golf clothes, might 
have described him as “that charming boy, 
Pierce Conway—what a pity he’s married! 
And they say he’s mixed up with all sorts of 
big business. I do hope the wolves won’t 
fleece him! ’ ’ 

Brent had once heard a woman speak of him 
in some such words, and had smiled to himself. 
So much for appearances, he had thought, and 
for that hoary myth, woman’s intuition! 


FRANCES AND ALINE 75 


To-day Conway had come down to Brents of¬ 
fice to have a will drawn that should prove both 
“ water tight and bomb proof.” It seemed 
that he wanted his wife and his two children to 
get the benefit of every dollar he might leave, 
and that he foresaw claims and counterclaims, 
made by various unprincipled persons in case 
of his early demise. As he phrased it: 

“First there’s my own family—married sis¬ 
ter and two lazy brothers—and when I was a 
youngster they gave me the go-by. Whether 
I ended in the poor house or starved by the 
roadside meant nothing to them. But when I 
began to make good they got affectionate—and 
as long as I’m alive I’ve got to hand ’em out 
a few dollars now and then. But when I pass 
on I want Emily and the kids safeguarded. 
And not only from my own poor relations, and 
hers—but from those damned harpies who’re 
always claiming to have married some defunct 
millionaire in his callow youth—the common- 
law marriage which, makes a fellow’s real wife 
penniless and nameless and his children 
illegitimate. ’ ’ 

Brent interposed: 

“But no will can protect a man’s recognized 
wife if it’s legally proved that he’s married 
already. ...” 

“That’s not my case,” interrupted Conway,, 
laughing. “One wife’s enough for me, always 
will be. But honestly, these fake cases one 
reads about scare me—” 


76 


FULFILLMENT 


“Few of them are successful/’ said Brent. 
“Any woman can claim intimate relations with 
some dead Morgan or Rockefeller, common law 
marriage, intention to provide support, and so 
forth. But few such claims survive the legal 
processes necessary for final recognition—” 

“Well/' said Conway, “I want things tied as 
tight as possible. There are extra precautions 
one can take, aren’t there?” 

“Possibly,” Brent conceded. 

“All right then, I want you to take ’em. No 
jane’s going to crowd out my own flesh and 
blood if I can help it. ’ ’ 

Brent said in his most impersonal voice: 

“You have no special person or persons in 
mind, I suppose?” 

Conway grunted, and the grunt ended in an 
amused cackle. 

“No person who has a legal leg to stand on, 
Mr. Appleton. In fact I’ve had nothing to do 
with women—in that way. I married young, 
and my wife and I are in love with each other. 
But it hasn’t been for lack of opportunity for 
the other kind of thing. Any quick success at¬ 
tracts a certain brand of women. If I hadn’t 
cared for Emily I might have had a neat little 
harem by this time. But though every man has 
his temptations I’ve got a hunch that stolen 
fruit sets his teeth on edge, especially when he’s 
married. ’ ’ 

They went deeper into the question of the 
will. But underneath his apparent preoccu- 


FRANCES AND ALINE 77 


pation Brent found himself repeating that last 
phrase of Conway’s. He wondered whether 
the cool, hard, able young man was right, 
whether this particular kind of stolen fruit was 
invariably bitter. . . . But when Conway was 
gone and he had time to look over his mail he 
found a gray envelope in a hand that he did not 
know, a woman’s delicate angular writing. 
For an instant he had a sharp reaction, a faint 
feeling of dread; then he broke the seal and 
read Aline’s first note. It was only a brief 
paragraph: 

“ Brent, I want you to get this to-morrow, 
so I am posting it to-night. And you’re to 
know that I’m not sorry, that I’m happy, 
happier than I’ve been in years. When I see 
you again, perhaps Wednesday evening if 
you’re not busy, I’ll tell you why. And per¬ 
haps you do not have to be told! Au revoir— 
and I hope to you also life looks simpler, gayer, 
more worth having—” 

There was no signature, no date, but Brent 
found his pulses drumming as he read the brief 
lines. No, he was not sorry either. Life 
surely was a braver thing than he had known it 
in long dull years. . . . The outcome—his 
future relation to Frances, any possible effects 
upon Boblee, the effect upon himself of the 
secrecy he detested—all these problems he rele¬ 
gated to the future, that shadowy future which 
all of us endeavor to push farther into the un¬ 
known whenever our inner spark of conviction 


78 


FULFILLMENT 


and our actions conflict. . . . Wednesday eve¬ 
ning was as far ahead as Brent meant to look 
now, and during the rest of the day he found 
himself working like a well-made, freshly oiled 
machine. Everything he touched seemed in¬ 
stantly to become less of a problem, to indicate 
possibilities of successful handling. By five 
o ’clock he was aware of a rarely successful day, 
just as his stenographer, Miss Gail, came from 
her tiny cubbyhole next to his room to speak to 
him. She was an alert young woman, with a 
thin plain face and an attractive smile, and as 
she entered, with her hat on, she said cheer¬ 
fully: 

“Mr. Appleton, the Conway will is typed. 
And I’ve gotten out the letters you gave me: 
they’re ready for signature.” 

As he looked them over and signed, he asked: 

“How is your father now, Miss Gail? Any 
change there?” 

The girl’s face tightened, grew a little grim, 
almost harsh. Her father, at one time an able 
newspaper man, had been injured in an accident 
a year earlier, and was now paralyzed from 
the waist down, although his mind was as keen 
as ever and he was only fifty-five. 

“He seems to move his feet a little bit. But 
the doctor isn’t very hopeful.” She added 
swiftly: “Mr. Appleton, I think it would be 
easier if his mind wasn’t so clear—if he didn’t 
understand his own case so well, the hopeless¬ 
ness of it—the awful dependence. For a man 


FRANCES AND ALINE 79 


like Father—so young, and with his tempera¬ 
ment—the dependence is worse than the suf¬ 
fering. You know what it would be!” 

Brent looked at the lean figure in the quiet 
frock, at the plain clever face and smooth 
brown hair. She was college bred, in the early 
thirties, capable, the sort of woman men like, 
respect, and rarely fall in love with. He said 
gently: 

“I don’t know, Miss Gail. But I can 
imagine. Yet in one way at least he’s in luck.’ 9 
She gathered up the letters, ready for post¬ 
ing, and walked to the door. “You mean—” 
“I mean that being old and ill without chil¬ 
dren, or with children who don’t care for you, 
must be awful. But if I were a helpless in¬ 
valid I think I’d feel that life was still bearable, 
—if I had a daughter like you. ’ ’ 

Edith Gail was a self-contained young per¬ 
son. She said only: ‘ 4 Thank you, Mr. Apple- 
ton. ’ ’ But as she went uptown on the Elevated 
she was thinking how kind Mr. Appleton was, 
how square and just, and also how generous, as 
just people are not always. . . . Only a month 
ago he had used his influence to get her a salary 
increase, sorely needed. She would do a great 
deal for Brent Appleton, if she could. . . . For 
the hundredth time she wondered about Mrs. 
Appleton, what she was really like under her 
graceful exterior, her unusual and sometimes 
astonishing beauty. Miss Gail had overheard 
one of the younger law clerks describe her as 


80 


FULFILLMENT 


“a beautiful doll—on ice,” and the phrase had 
stuck in her memory, even though she told 
herself that it was probably ridiculously 
inadequate. 

And yet—didn ’t happily married people give 
you an impression of steady contentment, or 
of real lift and swing and joyousness, at times? 
Certainly the junior partner never produced 
any such impression. 

Brent Appleton’s stenographer journeyed on 
uptown, thinking about marriage—how it came, 
or it didn’t, was happy or wasn’t—all with a 
queer unrelatedness to such extraneous facts as 
money and health and youth. . . . Her mother 
and father had been fortunate, and the texture 
of their marriage close knit, its colors the kind 
that wash and wear. She had hardly known 
them voluntarily separated, even for a night— 
until her mother’s death three years before 
her father’s accident. . . . How queer life was, 
and how unfair, playing favorites, giving some 
people all the good times and the easy berths. 
And yet—was it? Hid anybody really escape 
pain, disillusion, disappointment—that is, any¬ 
body who lived to be, say thirty, thirty-five? 

Yes, but that wasn’t the point. You had to 
suffer, but if you got something first, something 
splendid, worth having, you would feel that at 
least you hadn’t been cheated. . . . Even her 
father had known years of vivid living and lov¬ 
ing,—work for which he had cared. It was her 


FRANCES AND ALINE 81 


own life that seemed meager and dreary, devoid 
of any real hope. . . . 

She stopped at the corner to get some oranges 
for her father. Jessie, the little part-time 
maid, always forgot to buy fruit when she did 
their modest marketing—and oh, how that ex¬ 
tra thirty a month helped, when it came to small 
luxuries and comforts for her invalid. If the 
church people were right, she hoped Heaven 
would bless that tall, kindly, impersonal junior 
partner. ... 

It was exactly at this moment that Brent, 
flushed from rapid walking, climbed the last 
flight of stairs leading to Mrs. Armstrong’s 
apartment. When she answered his ring, in a 
blue embroidered smock, and with her bright 
hair tumbled, Brent said all in one breath, like 
any absurd, irresponsible boy lover: 

L 1 Aline-I-couldn’t-wait-till-Wednesday! You 
didn’t mean me to, did you?” 

Aline put out her hands and laughed the 
laugh he was learning to listen for. “ Brent, 
the orchids are enchanting: Oh Brent, how did 
we ever get along without —all those endless 
years?” 

Brent closed the door, shutting out the office, 
the world, every thought of Frances, for that 
brief incredible hour or two, that little space of 
rapture and youth, and—yes—love! Surely 
only love could so rest you, warm you, fill you 
brimful of this sense of possibility. What a 


82 


FULFILLMENT 


fool he had been not to recognize at once how 
beautiful Aline was—her slender body and 
gleaming hair. And how amazing her respon¬ 
siveness—after his hungry empty years. 


IX 


Slowly the late autumnal glamour gave place 
to the dark days of December, the city chang¬ 
ing from a place of hazy gleaming noons 
and starry nights to a riot of wind, with 
occasional snow flurries, the streets full of 
eager crowds doing their Christmas shopping 
early in response to myriad advertisements. 
To Brent, Christmas was a bore; but to Boblee 
it was doubly exciting because it happened also 
to be her birthday, and achieving the age of 
eighteen is an event in any life. Santa Claus 
was good to her; a sophisticated party frock, 
sleeveless and low-necked, was Frances’ contri¬ 
bution; from Brent hooks—all of Hawthorne; 
from Aline a fascinating necklace of polished 
Japanese beads that matched her henna frock. 
In these things the girl revelled; but there were 
two gifts still more precious, a tiny watch to be 
worn as a pendant to an old fashioned gold 
chain, once her father’s—this from Pat—and 
from her English teacher, Miss Marlowe, an 
advance copy of a book of verse in a yellow 
and black cover,—“ White Birch Trees, and 
Other Poems,” by Diana Marlowe. 

The watch was a secret: Boblee showed it to 
her uncle and asked him if she might keep it, 
and he said that he didn’t see why not. only 
83 


84 


FULFILLMENT 


she’d better tell Frances, which Boblee prom¬ 
ised to do, and then postponed all Christmas 
week, for reasons of her own that mere man 
might not penetrate. . . . The book of verse 
was another matter—no secret about that l 
Boblee was consumed with pride in an in¬ 
structor who could not only reel off Shake¬ 
speare by the page and juggle a class of 
giggling, boy-mad girls into a frame of mind 
capable of appreciating Marlowe, or Keats, but 
who could also produce a live, astonishing book 
of her own, written between conducting classes 
and revising themes. 

Weary from a week of night work at the 
Library of the Bar Association, Brent got home 
late one Saturday, and it was then that Boblee 
waylaid him on the stair with “White Birch 
Trees ’ ’ in her hand. 

There was a species of party in the drawing 
room, a young couple whose house Frances was 
redecorating, Mrs. Armstrong, with the porcine 
Cunningham in tow, and several artistic yet 
magnificently clothed young men, whom Brent 
and Boblee privately christened “the girls,” 
and two or three others. Brent had let himself 
in with his key and slipped upstairs on tiptoe, 
but Boblee was watching for him, and dragged 
him into the library, her hair down and her 
cheeks pink, her long slimness wrapped in an 
enticing old-rose teagown that almost made a 
woman of her. 

“Brent, I’ve been homesick for you—you 


FRANCES AND ALINE 85 

haven’t been home for aeons! And I’ve never 
yet told yon all by yourself how I adore “The 
Marble Faun,’ 9 and i 1 The Scarlet Letter , 9 9 and 
all the others. And now there’s this to show 
you!” 

“This” was the yellow book of verse held 
open at the inscription, in a firm, rather square 
hand: “To Roberta Lee Appleton, with 
Christmas greetings and birthday wishes, from 
her friend Diana Marlowe.” 

“From an honest-to-God author, for ME,’ 5 
said Boblee reverently. And then, in a breath, 

* ‘ Oh-Brent-how-you-do-prickle— ’ ’ 

Brent shook off the young giantess in the tea- 
gown, and dropped into his easiest chair with a 
long sigh. 

“I’ve been too busy to be civilized, Imp. 
I’ve been working like—” 

“Hell,” interpolated Boblee, with ultra¬ 
modern affection for Biblical phraseology. But 
Brent continued reproachfully, “Like a Chinese 
laundryman, only they seem to work all night 
as well as all day. Anyhow, I’m unfit for 
polite society—so for Heaven’s sake talk low, 
or Frances will come and root me out. But 
why aren’t you downstairs, Miss Eighteen? I 
thought you revelled in parties, and dresses 
without tops, and all the proper paraphernalia 
for vamping the youth of the period.” 

But Boblee was down on the stool at his feet, 
using his knees as a chair back, and poking the 
fire into a blaze. 


86 


FULFILLMENT 


“I’ll tell you that soon, Honorable Uncle! 
Hut now I want to read to you—bits I specially 
like—so be quiet. Yes, you may smoke—not a 
cigar, but your pipe. ’ ’ 

The pipe in action, Boblee proceeded to rustle 
pages, skimming off poetical cream here and 
there. 

“And now and then a solemn owl 
Hoots eerily, and old dogs prowl 
And horses munch the moonlit grass 
And patiently watch fairies pass. . . 

she read, concluding one of the poems. “Don’t 
you like that, Brent?” 

He took his pipe out of his mouth to kiss a 
small curl on the white neck. 

“Not bad, infant. I’ve certainly seen 
‘ horses munch the moonlit grass’ even if I 
haven’t had a satisfactory view of fairies. 
Bead some more.” 

Flattered for her beloved muse Boblee turned 
pages carefully. 

“Here’s another—different—I think it’s 
queer, but I like it—‘At The Dance.’ ” 

She read some rather irregular not unmusical 
lines: 

“She’s very close, and most unfairly fair, 

He clasps and holds her, all her body’s grace, 

Her gleaming argent gown and upturned face, 
Against his brow her honey-colored hair. . . . 


FBANCES AND ALINE 87 


“Then suddenly he sees her painted lips, 

Her warped desire for conquest, through the guise 
Of siren youth and sweet impassioned eyes: 

And, as the music swings and sways and dips, 

He says, ‘Just one more turn, before the end—’ 

“So once again they’re on the gleaming floor 
Until a youth cuts in. Beside the door 
He stands to watch her, dancing with her friend. 
She lifts her hand, a gesture daring, gay, ^ 

He smiles, but turns to seek the empty street, 

A wary veteran in wise retreat, 

While, like some splendid tulip, blooms the day.” 

Erent sat up rather suddenly. “Why in 
time do you like that, Boblee?” 

“Well — 99 said Boblee thoughfully, “I like 
‘argent gown and honey colored hair 9 and ‘ siren 
youth, with sweet impassioned eyes . 9 And she 
reminds me of somebody—I don’t know who— 
I Ve been trying to think. ...” 

Brent did not have to “think”: he knew the 
person those lines suggested to him, and he had 
a quite illogical feeling of distaste, though not 
for the verse. His reaction amounted to a 
swift, obsessing dread that in some subtle way 
Aline, or he himself, might brush the delicate 
velvet from this butterfly’s wing. . . . Boblee’s 
guileless youth was precious to him; there had 
been moments in the past few weeks when he 
had wanted to avoid her, not to touch her, or 
meet the frank affection of her eyes and lips. 


88 


FULFILLMENT 


Although he told himself that a relation like 
his to Aline was far more normal than the su¬ 
perficial, conventional tie officially binding him 
to Frances, some curious reluctance—whether 
of conscience or convention—made him wince 
whenever he saw Boblee with Aline. The at¬ 
titude was prudish—unfair to Aline—unless he 
were also to regard himself an undesirable 
companion for the child whom he loved. 

The young voice was reading again, and with 
what seemed to Brent an uncanny sympathy: 

“The little wars of men 
May come and go; 

Yon will not come again, 

Though roses blow. . . . 

“Some know a leaden shame— 

Gray grief that kills—« 

My grief is like a flame 
Across the hills. . . . 

“Ah, they have never known 
One joy like this— 

A boy’s embracing arms— 

A boy’s wild kiss. . . . 

“And so I shed no tears; 

I am too proud 
Of your brief twenty years 
And your bright shroud. ...” 

Brent had an extraordinary feeling that the 
writer of the vagrant verse in the yellow book 


FRANCES AND ALINE 89 


knew him, was alternately stinging him with 
satire and touching him with the velvet fingers 
of memory. The last lines brought back to him 
that hour of his own youth, so alien to any ex¬ 
periences of his maturity. Then he heard Bob- 
lee saying: 

“At school weVe been wondering about 
Diana—Miss Marlowe—whether she didn’t lose 
someone in the war, a brother, or a lover. 
Only none of us wanted to ask her. You see, 
she’s awfully nice, and she’s never gloomy and 
crabbed, like some of the others. But you 
don’t grow intimate with her, I mean very 
soon; and sometimes her face gets peaked, and 
kind of lonesome—as if she were thinking of 
things she never talked about. This poem 
seems to match that look.” 

The young philosopher mused and Brent 
smoked on. Now and then they could hear a 
burst of laughter downstairs, a man singing 
or reciting, a woman’s high note of mirth— 
Aline’s voice—Brent told himself. The sounds 
only seemed to shut them in more cozily, 
thought the girl. 

But suddenly she was on her feet: ‘ ‘ They ’re 

coming up here, Brent. I’m going. Good 
night!” and she was off, her splendid dressing 
gown whisking behind her swift feet, her long 
hair swinging back. Brent heard, not voices, 
but a step on the stair. Then the door opened 
and someone came in, pausing just outside the 
circle of firelight. He saw that it was Aline. 


90 


FULFILLMENT 


She shut the door behind her and came toward 
him. 

“Brent—darling—do you realize I haven’t 
seen you for three days!” 

He felt her arms about him, perceived faint 
fragrances, the hot sweetness of her lips. He 
drew away almost angrily. 

“ Aline, this is dangerous—here. Boblee has 
just gone up.” 

Aline’s laugh, delicate, mocking, broke the 
brooding stillness of the room. “Boblee—al¬ 
ways Boblee—and never Frances! Brent, if 
she weren’t your own niece I should be horribly 
jealous. I think I am, anyway—of her in¬ 
fluence over you—her power to come to you 
whenever she likes—her irritating absurd 
youth. ’ ’ 

The little French clock on the mantel chimed 
midnight. 

Aline started. “I must go back. Cunning¬ 
ham is going to take me home—worse luck. 
Brent, will you come—later?” 

“I oughtn’t to, Aline. I’ve got a full day to¬ 
morrow. And then, coming late like this, I 
might get you talked about, in your apartment 
house.” 

She stood looking at him, lovely in her eve¬ 
ning frock, with bare arms and shoulders, warm 
color in cheeks and lips. 

“In an obscure walk-up house like that no¬ 
body knows or cares,” she said. “Ah, Brent, 
don’t you want to come?” 


FBANCES AND ALINE 91 


He looked at her, and a curious thing 
happened. For one long moment she seemed 
utterly alien, apart from everything he held 
dear. He did not want to touch her. The min¬ 
utes grew, the clock ticked on, to Brent the 
silence seemed horrible. Then she left him as 
suddenly as she had come: it was as if a vivid 
flame had leaped up and then died down. 
Brent went to the door, saying in a low voice: 

“Wait—come back, Aline!” 

Silence. She must really have gone down; 
and he returned to his fire, only to feel a breath 
of cold air, then the tips of cool fingers over 
his eyes. 

“Do you want me? Are you sure?” 

The mood of that curious moment had van¬ 
ished. He bent back her head, kissed her lips 
repeatedly. She whispered: 

“You’ll come?” 

He answered with a laugh: 

“Yes. Oh, yes. . . 

This time she was gone for good; he heard 
voices in the hall, his wife’s, Cunningham’s 
cool slow baritone, then the hall door slammed. 
Later, on her way to bed, Frances looked in, 
calm, fair, lovely. 

“I’m awfully tired, Brent, but it was rather 
nice—the dinner, and afterward. I wish you 
had come. I sent Aline up to see you; did she 
tell you how we missed you ? ’ ’ 

“I had to work late, Frances. It’s been a 
bad week. Yes, I saw Aline.” 


92 


FULFILLMENT 


Then he had an odd impulse. He detained 
her for an instant, his hand on her shoulder. 

“Frances, suppose it comes to a choice—sup¬ 
pose I ever feel—” 

She moved away: “What are you talking 
about, Brent ?” 

“Wait a moment. I really want to ask you 
something. I’ve given you your own way for 
years. Suppose I changed—had to have more 
than you’ve given me—would you rather be¬ 
gin again—our life together—or have me go 
to—other women ? Tell me . 9 9 

She stood staring at him, still with that char¬ 
acteristic air of aloofness. 

“Brent! That sort of thing seems to me so 
—crude. I thought we’d put it by, as one does 
childish things. And yet I have always said 
that if you must — 99 

He caught her arm. 

“God! Can’t you see that any man has his 
pride—that I can’t take what you loathe giv¬ 
ing ! But there are women who feel differently 
—women a man meets everywhere—Frances, 
things can’t go on this way—” 

She winced, freed herself. 

“You hurt, Brent. Let go.” 

Then he heard her little cool laugh and 
thought of Aline—of her warm lips and arms. 
The contrast between the two had never been 
so sharp, so insistent. About this wife of his 
there was something soulless, Undine-like, chill¬ 
ing to his mood, whereas the memory of Aline 


FRANCES AND ALINE 93 


was releasing, fiery sweet. Then Frances 
surprised him by one of her rare flashes of 
insight. 

“Don’t let Aline get a hold on you, Brent. 
She was the sort of girl boys were wild about— 
she flattered them and I know she spooned out¬ 
rageously. But she’s the managing type— 
and after the first you’d resent being manipu¬ 
lated. She’s not your kind.” 

Brent touched very lightly a floating end of 
her gown. 

“Frances, if you really loved a man he’d be 
safe enough, loyal. But you’ve never found 
out what love is.” 

She moved a step backward and smiled in a 
way that exasperated him. 

“Isn’t it all a matter of definition? I 
thought you were beginning to see how much 
more there is to life than that one phase. 
Brent, you don’t really want anybody else—you 
were just talking nonsense, weren’t you?” 

It seemed incredible that she could already 
have forgotten Aline, and her own warning. 
But that was no affair of his. 

“Probably I am. You know best. Run 
along to bed.” 

She was free, but she came back to pat him, 
much as a mother pats a refractory child. 

“Good old Brent! Sleep well. And you 
know I want you to be happy, don’t you ? ’ ’ 

“Oh, yes, I know,” he answered with an 
irony quite wasted. Half an hour later he left 


94 


FULFILLMENT 


the house, quietly, while Frances drifted into 
contented slumber, and Boblee dreamed of fly¬ 
ing to Mars, with Pat, in an airship which had 
the wings of a great gray moth. 

It was later, much later, in Aline’s gay little 
room, that Brent returned from a waking 
dream of his own to the world of debit and 
credit, where we pay for all our pleasures in 
some sort of coin. Her floating hair against 
his cheek, she murmured: 

“ Brent dear, how soon can things be ar¬ 
ranged? I mean so that we may have each 
other all the time, like this.” 

Absently he touched a ruddy curl with his 
finger tips. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean,” she replied very clearly and sen¬ 
sibly, “just how soon do you think you can get 
your divorce? Of course all this has been pos¬ 
sible because I’ve known it will last, that our 
relation is final. And Brent, it’s such a com¬ 
fort to feel so sure of a man—of his loyalty— 
his honor—” 

He felt as if he had been reading a book and 
had lost the context, as though whole pages, 
torn out, prevented his understanding some 
crucial situation. Yet he heard himself auto¬ 
matically answering: 

“I can’t tell about that—whether I shall ever 
be free. Certainly we must not count on it.” 

She said nothing more at the moment, but he 


FRANCES AND ALINE 95 


moved a little so that he could dimly see her 
face in the rosy glow of the lamp. Her slender 
arms and girlish breast—these he knew—but it 
was her face that he saw clearly, it almost 
seemed for the first time. At the moment it 
looked shrewd, the gray-green eyes drawn 
closer together, the red lips not parted sensu¬ 
ously but set in a firm line. Swiftly there 
passed through his mind his wife’s words— 
“the managing type.” 

He drew Aline closer. Well, it was worth 
the price, any price, his delight in her complete 
response. With a queer prophetic detachment 
he knew that he would have to pay in the end, 
some time, somehow. He knew too, with a half 
humorous feeling of distaste, even of dread, 
that he did not wholly understand or trust this 
delicate-limbed alluring creature who had 
tangled him in her shining web. 

Was it going to be difficult, even ugly, to¬ 
morrow? Had he any conviction that the tie 
between them was one of those enduring re¬ 
lations that compensate for so many of the evils 
of life ? He told himself that he did not know, 
or greatly care, about to-morrow— 













PART TWO 

BOBLEE 

























«* 






• V* % m V 
























































v 




N 


i 




















I 


I T had been a busy afternoon for Brent’s 
crony, Peter Tomlin, but the office hour was 
over at last, and the Doctor drew a relieved 
breath as his last patient, a plump hypochon¬ 
driac in gray spats and snutf colored clothes, 
left the inner office. A fragrance of camphor 
balls, and something suggestive of medicated 
peppermint, lingered in his wake. 

Tomlin’s sigh held relief mingled with ex¬ 
asperation as he extended a long arm toward 
a pile of manuscript on his desk, a half finished 
paper for The Medical Record. He could get 
in an hour of work before keeping a dinner en¬ 
gagement, in Eleventh Street with Boblee and 
Brent. And then his ruddy cheeked young 
office assistant appeared, looking slightly 
shamefaced. 

‘ ‘ There’s one more, Doctor. A new patient, 
anxious to see you to-day.” 

“It’s nearly half past five, Miss Grant.” 

“I know, Doctor. But I don’t think she’ll 
take long.” 

As a rule Miss Grant played the part of 
beneficent ogre when patients arrived late, 
jealously guarding the Doctor’s leisure; so he 
had a ruffled consciousness that for some reason 
99 


100 


FULFILLMENT 


lie must make an exception in this instance. 
He said fretfully: 

“ ‘She’ indicating just what sort of in¬ 
dividual ?’ ’ 

“A lady, Doctor Tomlin, young, fine looking, 
but with circles under her eyes, much too pale. 
Looks as though she hadn’t slept for a week.” 

The professional curiosity was aroused, as 
little Grant had known it would be, and the 
potentate waved a brusque hand: 

“Oh, all right. But look alive. I’ve got 
work to do.” 

Little Grant whisked out, and in her place ap¬ 
peared a tall woman in a gray frock and a dark 
fur, a woman with rather heavy brows and fine, 
dark hair under a small gray hat. The girl— 
she was a girl to Tomlin, himself in the contem¬ 
plative fifties—carried her head well up, the 
poise that goes with youth and happiness, but 
her eyelids were heavy, and the lines in her 
face much too deep. She said in a clear pleas¬ 
ant contralto: 

“Dr. Tomlin, I know I’m late, and I’m sorry. 
But I was delayed—my time isn’t my own.” 

The Doctor put out his big hand, liked the 
feeling of the firm fingers it enclosed, and 
looked the question he did not ask. She an¬ 
swered the look, smiling: 

“I came through Roberta Appleton, a pupil 
of mine, and I believe a friend of yours. She 
says you take care of her and her family: that 


BOBLEE 


101 


you know everything, and that your patients 
always get well, if they’re under eighty! Do 
you wonder that I came, hot foot? And my 
name is Marlowe, Diana Marlowe, spinster.” 

The Doctor grunted: “And Southerner. 
Your accent’s Hanover, Virginia—I could cut 
it with a knife!” 

The new patient laughed. “Wrong, Doctor! 
It’s the next county, King William; or was. 
I’ve been away from home some years.” 

When he had seated her to his satisfaction, 
Tomlin asked “Why didn’t you come to me a 
month ago? You’ve been having a bad time.” 

“Because I thought I could take care of 
myself; it’s such a foolish kind of upset. And 
also because, being the daughter and grand¬ 
daughter of physicians, I avoid them when I 
can! ’ ’ 

“For your sake or ours?” 

Her low laugh came again, and Tomlin liked 
it. 

“Yours, mostly! You’re an overworked lot, 
with a balked passion for associating with 
completely well people—whom you rarely see! 
Generally I answer the description—but just 
now I’m queer.” 

Tomlin took her wrist and began asking ques¬ 
tions. Finally he said: 

6 ‘ Of course we ’re beating the devil around the 
stump. This thing is mental, not physical— 
some strain or shock. Will you tell me the 


102 


FULFILLMENT 


whole story—or are yon going to say that you 
can’t ‘violate confidences’ reposed in you—in 
plain English can’t trust your doctor?” 

She looked at him ruefully. 

“I came here to talk to a comfortable, old 
style G. P., but you sound like one of the dread¬ 
ful psychiatrists we’re all so afraid of nowa¬ 
days, some shark on mental telepathy and the 
unconscious mind!” 

Tomlin chuckled. “Don’t worry. My meth¬ 
ods are antiquated enough, but I do occasionally 
use what gray matter the good Lord put into my 
skull. So think it over, and if you’re not too 
cautious we’ll get to the root of the trouble.” 

His patient leaned back in the cushioned arm¬ 
chair, and her face ceased to sparkle. It be¬ 
came wistful; little gray shadows, stealing 
about lips and temples, effaced the look of gal¬ 
lant, high-spirited youth it had worn at first. 
Tomlin watched her, waiting patiently for her 
to collect her thoughts. He had quite forgotten 
his paper for the Record. 

“I’m all right in the day,” she began, slowly, 
“when I can be working, or reading, or dealing 
with the girls in my classes. But at night— 
well, you see, Doctor, for nearly seven months 
I’ve had the same recurrent dream. It’s about 
my best friend, who happened also to be my 
cousin. Night after night I see him in deep 
water, seized with a sudden cramp, struggling, 
fighting. There’s a fog over the water, and a 


BOBLEE 


103 


boat, with a rope floating. But when he gets 
near enough to seize the rope I always take the 
knife that’s in my hand and cut it in two. 
Then he drowns, I see him sink, bubbles come 
up to the surface—and then—nothing—just 
sea and fog. When I wake I’mina cold sweat, 
my heart thudding horribly. . . . ’ ’ 

She stopped and leaned back in her chair. 
Peter Tomlin sat bolt upright, staring at her. 

“Is this the first time you’ve talked the thing 
out?” 

“I suppose it is. You see, it’s rather an 
intimate matter—and then your friends like 
you so much better when you don’t have 
troubles of your own—just time to listen to 
theirs! ’ ’ 

Tomlin chuckled. “They do.” 

She added, reluctantly: “Also it parallels 
life too closely. This cousin died last summer, 
in Richmond, and I suppose I knew the danger 
he was in—yet failed to help him. ’ ’ 

“You mean—?” 

She sat very still, gazing blindly at Peter 
Tomlin’s ugly kind face. 

“I’ll have to begin rather far back, I’m 
afraid, Doctor. Ever since I was a little girl 
we were friends, Carter and I. And as we 
were cousins—southern cousins, near enough 
for intimacy and distant enough for romance— 
we were often thrown together. Before the 
War he was an artist, with some talent, but 


104 


FULFILLMENT 


when he came back from France he said he 
didn’t want to paint pretty women and land¬ 
scapes any more—that he needed real money 
—was going into business. He was the kind 
of man people like, full of charm. You know 
our rather brilliant, magnetic type. And of 
course he drank—that sort often does—but not 
enough to knock him out quickly. And he was 
clever, ambitious. ... A year or two ago he 
;went in with a big land improvement company, 
and for a time made quite a lot of money. But 
a slump came, the company failed, people we 
knew suffered—retired army officers, widows, 
hard-working people who had put their last 
dollar into the enterprise that Carter had made 
seem so wonderful. Last spring he came to 
New York—to raise money. He came to see 
me of course—talked most of one night, a sort 
of review of his whole life—he had never 
seemed so lovable, so fascinating. He had been 
drinking, and still he wasn’t drunk. I never 
saw him really drunk—” 

“Yes,” said Tomlin. “I know the kind. Go 
on.” 

“Among other things he told me of a possible 
way out of all his troubles. A woman, very 
rich, older than himself, cared for him, wanted 
to marry him, even to straighten out his tangled 
financial affairs. But he didn’t love her. And 
there was another complication. ’ ’ 

The patient paused. 

“I suppose he was in love with you —that the 


BOBLEE 105 

rich woman was second fiddle,” said Tomlin 
caustically. 

“Yes—and yon see Pd always cared for him 
more than for any one, except my mother. It 
began when I was fifteen or sixteen. He was 
always coming back from somewhere, telling me 
that he was going to wait for me. But Mother 
disliked the idea. She adored Carter as every 
one did, but she didn’t want him for a son-in- 
law. And when I was really grown—it was 
during the War and just before she died, while 
he was in France—she asked me to promise her 
that I’d never marry him, unless he stopped 
drinking; and I did. ’ ’ 

She interrupted herself to ask for a cigarette, 
which Tomlin gave her, with a disapproving 
gesture. Then she continued: 

“That night I saw all the splendid things 
about him. He’d been wounded in France— 
his face was still scarred—and his record over 
there was magnificent. I knew, too, that in 
spite of the failure of the company he’d 
promoted he was absolutely straight about 
money. And I did care for him—wanted to 
give him everything he asked for. But he still 
drank—that was obvious—and I was so afraid 
of it that I was half glad I’d made that promise. 
So I told him that I couldn’t, told him about 
Mother.” 

She paused, but went on presently: “And 
then I made a mistake; knowing Carter 
and his stiff-backed, male pride, I ought to have 


106 


FULFILLMENT 


had more sense. I had had a little money left 
me recently, a few thousand, and I asked him 
to take it, to use—as far as it would go—to 
straighten things out. We argued about it a 
long time. He refused to touch it, and we both 
got excited. My offering him the money when 
I refused to marry him, or to make any 
promises, just made things worse. Six weeks 
later he married the woman I knew about— 
and one month afterward he was dead—the 
doctor said of heart failure. His wife was told 
that. The newspapers all spoke of a bad lesion, 
recounted his war record, praised him. But 
later his sister sent me a sealed envelope 
addressed to me in his handwriting. In it I 
found his mother ’s engagement ring, and a few 
words scrawled on a bit of paper: ‘At least 
no one else shall have this—afterward.’ That 
was all—and since then, all these months, I’ve 
been dreaming that dream—two or three times 
a week. It seems to be a mixture of fact and 
fiction and vague memories; we used to sail 
together on Chesapeake Bay years ago. But it 
goes on and on—I’m afraid to go to sleep. ...” 

Her voice trailed into silence, and presently 
Tomlin put into words the sinister dread under¬ 
lying the dream: 

“I suppose you think he killed himself, and 
that if you had married him, or even managed 
that interview better, he might still be alive?” 

She shivered. 

“I don’t know, even now, what I ought to 


BOBLEE 


107 


have done, Dr. Tomlin. How far should 
promises to people who have died bind you? 
I kept faith with Mother—and failed him— 
when I was the one person who might have 
helped. If Pd been even intelligent, tactful, 
the whole problem might have worked out 
differently—” 

“Of course, that is possible,’’ said Tomlin, 
deliberately. “On the other hand you might 
only have postponed the catastrophe. And at 
the time you did the best you knew, didn’t 
you ?’ ’ 

Her lip trembled. “Yes, oh yes. But I was 
so stupid!” 

The Doctor made a queer sound, something 
between a grunt and a sigh. 

“Exactly. You were stupid, like all the rest 
of us when we get to a blind trail! My dear 
Miss Marlowe, emotional complexes of this sort 
don’t come only to attractive young women. 
Every physician has such experiences. A year 
ago a man came to me for treatment, a pro¬ 
fessional man in the early forties, able, useful, 
of irreproachable personal character. He was 
neurasthenic, yet eager to be helped, apparently 
game for a good fight. I told him I thought 
complete rest and outdoor life would put him 
on his feet, and I sent him off on a vacation, 
the first he’d had in years. He went to the 
place I suggested, a little rest camp in the 
Maine Woods—and shot himself three days 
after he got there! ’ ’ 


108 


FULFILLMENT 


He stopped abruptly, then added quietly: 
4 4 But if I bad consigned him to a regular 
sanatorium near borne, or sent for bis wife and 
bad a talk with ber—as I did in another case 
—if I bad done any of a dozen other things, he 
might be alive to-day . 9 7 

He moved a paperweight carefully, set it 
down again on bis desk, and looked up at bis 
patient. 

“Miss Marlowe, do you think I ought to be 
dreaming about that poor devil, torturing my¬ 
self because I’m fallible instead of omniscient, 
as God knows we doctors would like to be! 
Or do you think that because of blunders of this 
kind a man should be kicked out of medicine 
and set to doctoring horses!” 

He spoke with a sort of fierce challenge, and 
the girl’s face changed, her eyes filled with 
tears. Forgetting her own trouble, she leaned 
toward him: 

“It must be horrible—the responsibility—the 
carrying of other people’s lives on your 
shoulders! Of course you weren’t to blame, 
Doctor! Your prescription would have worked 
with ninety-nine men out of a hundred—” 

“Exactly,” said Tomlin, still gruff, but with 
a new look in his eyes, the friendly, half quiz¬ 
zical twinkle that Boblee knew so well. He 
added, in a practical, strictly professional 
tone: 

“Now, young woman, I’ll give you a foolish 


BOBLEE 


109 


little powder to take for two or three nights, 
and you 're to get a short walk, and drink some 
hot milk, before going to bed. Cigarettes 
barred—well, I’ll allow three a day. No more! 
And I don’t want to hear of your dreaming that 
damn-fool dream again as long as you live. 
Do you hear me?” 

Boblee’s English teacher pulled on her gloves, 
got to her feet: 

“I feel like that mythological person who 
dumped the world on Hercules’ shoulders. . . . 
It’s the most amazing relief! ’ ’ 

* ‘ Good! If you must go, which way are you 
walking?” 

“Down—Madison Square.” 

“Then wait a bit, until I get my coat. I’m 
due at the Appletons’ for dinner, and Boblee 
rubbed it in that I was to come early.” 

They went down in the elevator of the sedate 
professional building, full of physicians and 
surgeons and provokingly healthy nurses in 
uniform. On the street Miss Marlowe said 
rather shyly: 

“Tell Boblee I’m taking her cure, will you? 
Already I feel peaceful, even young again. 
I’ve been seedy and demoralized. My poor 
children have suffered—” 

“Don’t believe that, ’ ’ grunted Tomlin. “ I’ve 
heard Boblee descant on your virtues, your 
popularity, the way you know your Shake¬ 
speare—as most modern teachers don’t. Those 


110 


FULFILLMENT 


flappers have no grievance. Now, mind yon 
look in on me by the end of the week. And 
don’t forget the hot milk.” 

They parted at the corner of the Square, 
where the bronze Farragut attracts explorative 
hoys and birds and a few discerning adults by 
his grave beauty and his air of patient waiting. 
Crossing the park Diana turned, lifted her 
hand, and received in return the tribute of a 
soft felt hat flourished in midair. It had be¬ 
gun to snow and she hurried on, eager to reach 
her pleasant sitting room, where a pile of 
themes and a box of dry firewood awaited her. 
She told herself that to-night she would not 
dread bed-time. Telling her story to this blunt, 
understanding physician had changed its char¬ 
acter. He was right; if you held yourself 
responsible for the abnormalities of the people 
you loved and tried to help, though without 
success, you would be blaming yourself for not 
being as gods, omniscient, even omnipotent! 
The past was no longer yours save as it counted 
for understanding. But you had the present— 
in that lay opportunity, and hope. 

Peter Tomlin walked on down the Avenue, 
full of that contentment, like the satisfaction of 
a fragrant leisurely pipe, which sometimes 
followed the acquisition of a new patient, not 
too ill, too crystallized, or too old. He liked 
this friend of Boblee’s, her stored vitality, her 
mixture of boyish frankness with a certain 


BOBLEE 


111 


womanly reserve, and her leaping sympathy 
that met you like a warm west wind. Oh, she 
had her faults, he was sure—too much tempera¬ 
ment, too little caution, a pride that might be¬ 
come dangerous. . . . 

In the house on West Eleventh Street the 
Doctor was admitted by a trim maid, and in¬ 
stantly, even tempestuously, embraced by a 
whirlwind in an alluring frock the color of 
jonquils in April. 

“Why all the frills V’ he demanded, holding 
the whirlwind at bay the better to study its 
blandishments. 

“It's Friday night,” said Boblee. “And 
Pat is coming to dinner and then going to take 
me to the theater. That’s the reason I wanted 
you early— 

The bell rang again, Pat appeared, and at 
the same moment Frances came down the stair, 
distinguished in a black frock with floating 
transparent sleeves. The Doctor’s new patient 
had demoralized him so that he had forgotten 
to change into his dinner coat; but Brent, de¬ 
layed at the office, wore ordinary business 
clothes, and Tomlin felt comfortable. 

During the meal he became aware of a subtle 
change in the atmosphere of this house which 
he thought he knew intimately. Boblee and 
Pat were obviously blissful at the prospect of 
a sophisticated play for the wise, themselves 
unchaperoned. Frances, as usual, talked well 
concerning her own activities. But the Doctor 


112 


FULFILLMENT 


found himself watching Brent. It was only a 
few weeks since the two men had met, yet Brent 
seemed younger, more alert, with less the air 
of being an onlooker at the game. 

Later, when the young ones were gone and 
Frances had excused herself, Tomlin wondered 
suddenly: Is it a woman? After all these 
years he’s come to life! If it is, let’s hope to 
God she’s worth upsetting the apple-cart 
for. . . . 

Yet what the two men talked about was the 
state of the stock market, and the European 
situation, until finally Brent broached a subject 
always close to his heart—Boblee. 

“Do you know, Pete, I believe that the child 
has a young man in love with her—and the 
kind you can’t ignore. However, I’m sure he 
hasn’t talked any nonsense to her yet. ’ ’ 

“Don’t be too sure,” said the Doctor. 
“What does Frances think?” 

Brent looked almost shocked by the question, 
and then as suddenly relieved. 

“Frances hasn’t seen it—I hope.” He 
added casually: “You know, Peter, that’s a 
subject which has never really interested 
Frances.” 

Tomlin, looking at his friend, felt a painful 
surge of pity, regret, even anger. Curious how 
illogical Fate was, giving to warm-hearted sen¬ 
sitive fellows like Brent Appleton, wives like 
Frances. Natural selection, no doubt. Peter 
had long known that one of life’s tragedies is 


BOBLEE 


113 


the way Youth adorns and bedecks certain 
personalities which, beneath subtleties of lovely 
color and alluring grace, are cheap, or vicious, 
or coldly selfish. Doubtless when Brent had 
first known Frances she had seemed to him the 
embodiment of poetry, of exquisite young 
womanhood, ready to warm into vivid passion. 
Tomlin still remembered his own first glimpse 
of her, now fifteen years ago, recalling her 
radiant freshness, her blonde delicacy, and that 
dawn-like glow, irresistible to any young man 
as imaginative and susceptible to the appeal of 
beauty as Brent Appleton. 

Rarely had Tomlin heard Brent speak of 
Frances during recent years, but the physician 
had his own theory concerning the pair, and 
if Brent was uncommunicative he still gave the 
impression that he would not mind old Peter’s 
knowing anything that concerned him: it was 
the putting an intimate situation into banal 
words that he disliked. To-night, smoking 
their comforting pipes, both men enjoyed the 
atmosphere of an intimacy that was restful if 
not often articulate. At last Tomlin put his 
hand on his friend’s knee. 

“I often wonder about you and Frances— 
how it will end, ’ ’ he said rather awkwardly. 

Brent smoked on, methodical, contented. At 
last he said dispassionately: 

“So far as I know she has no special 
grievance.” 

Peter laughed. “I’m not wondering about 


114 


FULFILLMENT 


Frances, Brent. After all, she merely belongs 
to a limited class of women, who ought either 
to marry their own kind of cold fish—or stay 
single. It’s yon Pm considering, wondering 
what you’re going to do about it.” 

Brent looked into the fire, away from the 
Doctor’s troubled face. 

“At the moment—nothing, Pete. Or noth¬ 
ing I can talk to you about. I have recently 
chucked a few old-fashioned scruples of mine— 
the psychologists would call them inhibitions. 
And I haven’t felt so fit or done such good work 
in years. ...” 

About this time Frances Appleton awoke 
to a disturbing curiosity concerning both Brent 
and Boblee. Frances liked people about her 
to be comfortable; but any extreme, either of 
happiness or of obvious depression, irritated 
her. She had a great affection for the word 
normal, and to Frances the normal person was 
the man or woman who reacted to life and 
experience as Frances reacted. Of late it 
seemed to her that Brent was kinder, more 
considerate, and at the same time more remote 
than at any time since their marriage. Always 
generous with money—although she was one 
of those fortunate wives able to earn as well 
as to spend—Brent had recently increased her 
allowance, telling her that affairs at his office 
justified larger expenditure at home. This 
was agreeable: one always needed things for 


BOBLEE 


115 


the house, a new motor would be a satisfaction, 
and she enjoyed planning attractive clothes 
both for herself and for Boblee. But she saw 
in her husband, lately, some subtle change 
for which she could not account. For one 
thing, his attitude toward her seemed at last 
exactly what she had long wished it to be, 
considerate, friendly, and yet entirely without 
that tenseness which had sometimes menaced 
the calm of their life together. 

In her early youth Frances had acquired 
certain unforgettable opinions from her re¬ 
ligious and self-contained mother. According 
to that gentlewoman’s philosophy of life, sex 
was an unfortunate accident upon which the 
Creator had carelessly stumbled thousands of 
years earlier, and which later He must have 
regretted, without being able to alter his own 
formula, “male and female created He them.” 

Madonna-eyed and tight-lipped, Frances’ 
mother had not used precisely those words, to 
be sure, but this was the idea conveyed to her 
only daughter, precisely as a generation earlier 
her own mother had handed down a similar con¬ 
viction. And Frances’ personal experience of 
child-bearing had deepened her feeling that this 
business of human reproduction is a badly 
bungled, ill-running machine. 

Everything considered, she realized that 
Brent had behaved very well, allowing for the 
inevitable inferiority of men to women in this 
particular; and now for some years her house- 


116 


FULFILLMENT 


hold responsibilities and her decorative work 
had filled her life so completely that she rarely 
thought of subjects she would have described 
as unpleasant. 

But lately Brent had been odd. She actually 
missed a certain mild excitement in that 
familiar dread of hers that sometime she might 
not be able to manage him. She told herself 
that if it had been any one but Brent she might 
have suspected him of some interest in another 
woman. Yet she had deliberately thrown Aline 
in his path as proof of her own superiority to 
those sentimental, jealous wives one is always 
seeing on the stage, and occasionally among 
one’s own acquaintances. To be sure this con¬ 
fidence was deepened by her conviction that 
Brent and Aline would always be unsym¬ 
pathetic, temperamentally alien. The fact that 
two people may be intellectually and spiritually 
unrelated, and yet physically attractive to each 
other, is a phenomenon that Frances would in¬ 
stantly and indignantly have denied. So she 
had flung to Brent her warning that Aline was 
not his kind with a conviction that if this were 
not already patent to him it soon would be. 

Yet on a stinging windy day in March 
Frances sat in her own pretty room, bright with 
chintz and gaily painted furniture, ostensibly 
designing a frock for Boblee, yet really wonder¬ 
ing what it was that made both girl and man 
so problematic of late. 

Brent was not nervous, or ‘‘queer ,* 9 or de- 


BOBLEE 


117 


manding as lie had been once, yet he was qnite 
unlike the Brent she had lived with so long: 
he talked more lightly and gaily, seemed 
younger—almost as young, she thought, as 
when they were married, over fifteen years ago. 
For a long time she had noticed in him a 
nervous irritability contrasting sharply with 
her own smooth calm, which made her feel ex¬ 
cessively superior, a sensation not without its 
attractions. But of late Brent had shown no 
signs of strain, even when he worked evenings 
at the library and confessed to more than the 
usual press of affairs at the office. He came 
and went with the regularity of the dining room 
clock, dined out with her once or twice a week, 
or went to the theater, and spent on an average 
two evenings away from home, usually work¬ 
ing in the library of the Bar Association. He 
also found time to try out the new car with 
either Frances or Boblee on Saturday and 
Sunday afternoons. 

He was teaching Boblee to drive, and this was 
a game that they both enjoyed. And some¬ 
times Frances invited a friend—Aline, or 
pretty little Mrs. Carpenter—and Brent rooted 
out Tomlin, and on sunny winter days the five 
would motor to Greenwich or Travers Island. 
On these occasions Brent’s companion on the 
front seat was sometimes Tomlin, and again 
Boblee, while occasionally the two men would 
sit together, and the girl would sandwich in 
between the older women, dreaming her own 


118 


FULFILLMENT 


iridescent dreams of youth, and wishing that 
Pat were not so busy at Stevens, or that her 
beloved Miss Marlowe might now and then 
make one of the party. 

Like Brent, Boblee seemed to Frances “not 
quite normal” at this time. The girl was 
gay, shining-eyed, apparently enjoying school, 
people, life itself, with what seemed to the older 
woman an exaggerated relish. One day they 
all drove to the ferry and went over to Hoboken, 
stopping for Pat at his boarding place close 
to the Campus. On the two extra seats, their 
backs to Frances and her friend, with the 
Doctor telling Brent in front about some new 
and startling heart operation, Boblee and Pat 
were utterly content and in a private heaven of 
their own. Since that brief half hour on top of 
the bus Pat had refrained from obvious love- 
making, but neither of them attempted to hide 
the fact that being together whenever possible 
was the one thing that mattered. They dis¬ 
cussed their lives at college and school with a 
meticulous attention to detail that would have 
bored any outsider. 

That afternoon Brent drove them along the 
west side of the river to a quaint old inn upon 
a cliff, with an eastern view of gleaming turrets 
and minarets suggestive of a scene from the 
Arabian Nights. After dinner, and before the 
start for home, Boblee and Pat took a walk 
along the cliff, in a soft blurred dusk, more in 


BOBLEE 


119 


keeping with the charm of May than of blustery 
March. It was during this walk that Pat for¬ 
got his scruples, those responsibilities of the 
mature young man taking care of a mere school¬ 
girl. He kissed Boblee in full view of all Man¬ 
hattan—across a mile of gleaming river! At 
the moment they had reached a spot where a 
turn in a path hid them from the waiting auto¬ 
mobile. Presently they were with the others, 
only to wait for Frances, still sketching on the 
edge of the cliff. She appeared finally, flushed 
and hurried, and in a moment they were coast¬ 
ing down the long hill to the ferry. 

Late that evening, when Pat and the Doctor 
were gone, and Brent was out, Frances entered 
the library where Boblee was putting in an 
hour on her trigonometry before bed. To the 
girl, glancing up absently from her work, her 
aunt looked lovelier than usual, in a pale sleeve¬ 
less tunic, as classical, and almost as im¬ 
personal, as some marble figure in a museum. 
And then Boblee was shocked into sharp atten¬ 
tion by her aunt’s voice: 

“Roberta, I can’t tell you how disgusted I 
was with you this afternoon—on the cliff— 
acting as though you were some common little 
shopgirl or factory hand!” 

Boblee’s backbone stiffened, and she rose to 
her full height, dark eyes gleaming, red lips 
tremulous. 

“Aunt Frances, how can you!” 


120 


FULFILLMENT 


Frances sat down in the very chair that 
Boblee had risen from, and her eyes looked as 
hard and cold as blue ice. 

“How can I? What I want to know is how 
often has this happened before—how far have 
you let Pat go? I’ve allowed you a great deal 
of freedom together because your Uncle Brent 
considered him a particularly fine young man, 
and because I knew his mother. But Pm not 
putting all the blame on Pat. Any nice girl 
can manage a man—if she wants to! And that 
sort of thing is horrid—disgusting. . . .” 

Boblee walked away and sat down upon a 
chair on the other side of the table. 

“Horrid—disgusting! Oh, Aunt Frances, 
you don’t know girls, ‘nice girls!’ They’re— 
why Pat and I are models of propriety beside 
some of the others! We wouldn’t do things 
they do all the time—Pat wouldn’t let me. 
And besides ...” 

She wanted to add; “Pat really cares, and 
wants me to marry him. ’ ’ But the memory of 
that evening on the bus came back, and the 
boy’s words: “We won’t talk about it yet, to 
any one. They’d laugh at us, call it calf love— 
but we know that it isn’t.” Yes, it was better 
to let Aunt Frances imagine things twisted and 
even ugly—than to confide to her what Pat did 
not want told. . . . 

But Frances had not finished. She went on 
in that inflexible, chilly voice: “What other 
girls do doesn’t matter in the least. You’re 


BOBLEE 


121 


supposed to act like a lady, and you are my 
charge; so I mean to see that you do. . . . 
Have you and Pat any engagement ahead ?” 

“He was coming Friday night to take me to 
Laura Fairlee’s dance. You said I might go.” 

“But not now—with Pat,” said Frances. 
“Aline and I are going to the theater with some 
friends of hers. You’d better come with us. 
Write to him and tell him that you can’t go— 
then or any time. And tell him why, Roberta. ’ ’ 

Boblee sat with clenched hands, her teeth 
sunk deep into her red lip. But Frances went 
further, committed the unpardonable sin: 

“Of course if you run to Brent and tell him 
your side of the story he’ll say that I’m over 
particular. 1 know I’m right—but your Uncle 
Brent always takes your part. Just the same 
in a matter of this kind men are not fit to 
judge. They’re all tarred with the same 
brush.” 

Boblee got up from her chair and walked out 
of the room, head high and cheeks scarlet. She 
was in the sort of rage she had not known since, 
as a little girl of nine, she had seen some boys 
tormenting a scrawny alley cat. And the worst 
insult was the gibe at Brent. The girl felt 
that she hated her aunt . . . yet of course she 
couldn’t tell tales. She stayed awake for 
hours, feverish and miserable, wishing that she 
could cry like other girls; but Frances slept 
the placid sleep of the just. She considered 
that she had merely done her duty, and she 


122 


FULFILLMENT 


knew of old that she was quite safe. Boblee 
would not appeal to Brent. 

On the cliff’s edge Frances had seen Pat’s 
arms go round the girl’s tall young figure, had 
seen Boblee deliberately lift her face to he 
kissed. ... To Brent’s wife that frank im¬ 
pulsive response was a sort of indecency. 


II 


Writing to Pat was a difficult business for 
Boblee. It would have been simple enough if 
Prances had not been Brent’s wife. To the 
girl Brent was the most important, and 
certainly the most satisfying, relative in 
the world, and of course Aunt Frances be¬ 
longed to him, bore his name and sat at 
the head of his table. So Boblee felt that to 
tell Pat in cold hard words exactly the way 
she felt about Frances and her prohibition 
would not be exactly ‘ ‘ sporting , 9 ’ and yet she 
must break her engagement for the dance, and 
get over to him her unaltered if unworded 
devotion. 

Their letters these past months had not been 
sentimental; according to Pat they were not en¬ 
gaged, since he could not ask for her promise 
to marry him until he was out of college and 
attached to some sort of definite job. 

But if words like “marriage” and ‘ 4 darling” 
and “beloved” were for them, as for Miss Ailie 
in “Sentimental Tommy,” “words with which 
they had no concern,” at least those two young 
things managed to indicate a great deal without 
committing themselves to the technical terms 
of the engaged. For instance, Boblee to Pat, in 
that carefully thought out epistle: 

123 


124 


FULFILLMENT 


“Of course you know how I hate to mind like a 
silly infant, and give up our dance. Uncle Brent 
isn’t the least like Aunt Frances, you know; he 
wouldn’t have acted this way if he’d seen us, on the 
cliff. But after all she’s his, and I’m his too, so I 
suppose I’ve got to be decent and obedient and hold 
my tongue, no matter how boiling I am inside. But 
Pat, you do realize how I hate missing our own par¬ 
ticular onestep, don’t you? And the talk—knowing 
how things are at Stevens—just that splendid feel 
of being together. But, it had to happen, and I 
couldn’t tell her real things, about us; I don’t want 
you to tell either. After all this is my last year at 
school, and when I’ve taken a course in something, 
and gotten a job, even Aunt Frances won’t treat me 
as though I were a refractory inmate of a reforma¬ 
tory!—I try to realize that she can’t help being 
queer, but, just the same there’s something in me 
that rages and raves at having things spoiled this 
way! There are times when being young is a ter¬ 
rific handicap, don’t you think? Anyway your let¬ 
ters are perfectly spiffy, always! And I watch for 
the postman and hate him when he has nothing for 
me from you. Other people’s letters just don’t 
count.” 

Not once in these swift pages did Boblee nse 
words with which she had “no concern”; and 
yet to the person most concerned her letter 
seemed of a remarkable and satisfying elo¬ 
quence. 

During the next few weeks, however, even 
letters could not wholly conceal Life’s dreary 
capacity for stretching before one’s feet wastes 


BOBLEE 


125 


of dullness. The final examinations were near 
at hand; so Boblee was studying hard, and at 
school a pall of anticipatory gloom hung like 
a black curtain in certain classrooms. Then, 
Brent had gone to Boston for a business trip, 
to be gone five days, and five days alone with 
her aunt, save for servants and occasional 
callers, meant a test of self-control and pa¬ 
tience. True, Aline was at the house now and 
then: to Boblee the friendship between those 
two women was a curious and puzzling thing, 
since never once had she seen any real evidence 
of affection on either side. She decided that 
her aunt liked Mrs. Armstrong because they 
had gone to school together ages ago; and that 
they had kept in touch, not because there was 
much in common between them, but rather be¬ 
cause neither was the sort of woman who 
makes friends readily with others of her own 
sex. Then Aline seemed interested in Frances 
Appleton’s artistic and business ability: like 
every modern woman these two considered 
themselves peculiarly gifted in all matters per¬ 
taining to interior decoration, and Aline, idle 
dilettante though she was, really had a fine 
color sense which Frances recognized and 
profited by on many occasions. 

The girl would find the two women in 
Frances’ room examining samples of chintz or 
looking over designs Frances had made, or 
discussing and trying out new color combina¬ 
tions. Nevertheless Aline came to the house 


126 


FULFILLMENT 


less frequently than she had done a few months 
back. And once or twice Boblee had uncom¬ 
fortable sensations on occasions when Brent 
was home and Aline in the house. It seemed 
to the girl that Aline’s real interest was not 
Frances, or Frances’ work, or her own instinct 
for skilful or beautiful color adaptations and 
blendings, but Brent. Already Boblee knew a 
good deal about divorce. At school certain 
students were in the peculiar position of hav¬ 
ing two living parents and two step-parents, 
while one girl actually had a father; two step¬ 
mothers, one in vogue, the other obsolete; a 
mother; a step-father, soon to be divorced 
from her mother; and a step-father-to-be, once 
the third divorce in her family circle was 
actually consummated! 

So Boblee, despite her air of simplicity, was 
not wholly unsophisticated as to the luxuries 
and advantages of modern civilization. For a 
long time now she had dimly realized that in 
spite of her Aunt Frances’ undeniable beauty 
and talent, there was very little sympathy or 
mental intimacy between her uncle and aunt. 
They got along of course; she had never heard 
them quarrel. Even the bickering so common 
in many virtuous and affectionate families was 
not characteristic of the Appletons’ home life. 
But once Boblee had heard some one say: 

“For happiness in marriage three things are 
necessary: a sympathetic sense of humor, a 


B O B L E E 127 

taste for the same amusements, and a prejudice 
against the same people.’’ 

Instantly the girl had applied the test to 
Brent and Frances, and been appalled by the 
inevitable inferences. For those two never 
laughed at the same humorist or read the same 
book, almost never played the same games or 
liked the same play, and their friends mixed as 
hopelessly as oil and water. Brent’s special 
cronies, men like Mr. Foley, one of his partners, 
and Dr. Tomlin, were punctilious in their cour¬ 
tesy to his wife, and to her friends, but this very 
excess of courtesy suggested that they felt 
Brent’s wife to be an outsider. What they 
really wanted was Brent alone in his study, 
with their pipes and their queer mixture of pro¬ 
fessional and masculine talk beside the fire. 
As to Frances, Boblee knew that her aunt had 
many acquaintances who came frequently to 
the house, but they never seemed friends in any 
warm personal sense. Although in public 
places she seemed to 4 ‘walk in beauty,” with 
beauty’s inevitable appeal, the enthusiasm 
many people felt for her appearance and her 
cleverness as an artist never seemed to over¬ 
flow into personal affection or real intimacy. 

Aline was extraordinarily different. With 
less beauty she had more intimates, especially 
among men, and a vivid personal magnetism 
which Boblee had recognized after her first shy¬ 
ness. For Aunt Frances you felt a sort of 


128 


FULFILLMENT 


chilled admiration; but with Mrs. Armstrong 
you were warm and alive, rather like a young 
cat beside a hot, bright fire. And yet already 
Boblee had discovered that the fire sometimes 
scorched you, and at other times died down 
just when you had come to depend on it. 

With Boblee alone Aline was often friendly, 
amusing, even affectionate. But when men 
were in the room the girl felt a difference; 
often she had been made to feel superfluous, 
even in the presence of her own uncle, so that 
she would steal up to her room and stay there 
until the visitor was gone. 

During the busy yet lonesome fortnight after 
the cliff episode, when Boblee did not see Pat, 
it happened that twice she spent an evening 
with Aline. The first time the occasion was a 
little dinner at home, her Aunt Frances’ party, 
Brent being out of town. The men were Dr. 
Tomlin and two brothers whose new house 
Frances was decorating, prosperous bachelors 
with a Park Avenue label, a middle aged banker 
and his younger brother, Gerard and Warner 
McKim. 

As it happened Boblee sat by Dr. Tomlin, 
with Warner McKim on her left, and this per¬ 
son seemed the most amusing individual Boblee 
had met in a long time. She thought he 
couldn’t be much over thirty-five—to Boblee 
a mature yet not a great age—and never before 
had she met such flattering attention from any 
of the friends of her aunt and uncle, who too 


BOBLEE 


129 


often treated her—with the foolish inconsist¬ 
ency of the adult mind—as a mere schoolgirl! 

She wore that night a sleeveless, low-necked 
henna frock, with the beads Aline had given 
her, and a henna colored fillet in her dark hair, 
and while she was dressing she had liked her 
appearance so much that Pat’s absence seemed 
a tragedy. But at the dinner table she realized 
that the frock was not wasted; each one of the 
three men present looked at her in a new way, 
almost the way, she thought, that men looked 
at Aline. 

Later, in the drawing room, Aline played 
her own accompaniment for several ballads: she 
had a light, true voice, and people always liked 
to hear her. Boblee slipped up to her room in 
search of a missing handkerchief, and, coming 
downstairs, was waylaid in the hall by the 
younger Mclvim, just as Aline began a new 
song. 

“You can’t escape, Miss Roberta,” he said 
softly, touching her bare arm with his hand. 
Boblee had noticed his hands, long, slim¬ 
fingered, looking particularly white because of 
the dark seal ring that he wore, a ring which had 
a mysterious charm for the girl. For an in¬ 
stant they stood together in the hall, under the 
mellow light from an old Chinese lamp, while 
from the drawing room came the sound of 
strange exotic music. Boblee felt a tingling up 
her arm when McKim’s hand touched hers. 

“Do you know what you’re like in that 


130 FULFILLMENT 

frock?” McKim asked in his low, rather drawl¬ 
ing voice. 

“No, what?” 

“Not an orchid—though you have the grace 
and the delicate fire. Not a rose, you’re too 
whimsical and variable for a mere rose. 
Rather a tiger lily, tall and bright, swaying a 
little on its long stem. ...” 

Boblee blushed brightly and laughed, just 
as Aline’s voice rose in a sort of crooning 
chant: 

“A stranger in my father’s house am I— 

My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears, 

Come back to me, Beloved, or I die. ...” 

Words and music woke in the girl vague long¬ 
ings, even imagined memories at once puzzling 
and provocative. What was that curious feel¬ 
ing of having heard it before, of having passed 
through exactly this moment long ago? Then 
the man beside her did something which made 
her feel extraordinarily mature, something 
which she hadn’t thought would happen before 
she was at least twenty. . . . Bending his dark 
head he lifted the girl’s slender, still childish 
hand and brushed it with his lips. 

That kiss imparted a sensation of adventure 
—presently they were back in the drawing 
room where Boblee drank her forgotten coffee, 
left to cool on the tea table. In no time at all 


BOBLEE 


131 


the evening was over, the guests were gone, and 
Frances had kissed Boblee good night with 
more affection than she had shown in a long 
time. There was pride in her voice when she 
said: 

“Roberta, the dress you’re wearing is one 
of the prettiest I’ve ever designed. And you 
do me credit. I wish Brent could have seen you 
to-night!” 

Boblee had the swift pleasure any girl feels 
when praised by a beautiful older woman. Her 
warm lips pressed Frances’ cheek, and she 
said gratefully: “Thank you, Aunt Frances. 
An d I’ve had a lovely time. Good night.” 

For the moment she forgot both her grievance 
and her regret that Pat had not been at the 
party. She went up to bed thinking how lovely 
her aunt was in that shimmering frock, with 
her bright hair dressed high, and the delicate 
earrings, like tiny dew drops, in her close-set, 
shell-pink ears. And then she thought about 
the younger McKim, and that kiss pressed upon 
her hand. Finally she drifted off to sleep, to 
dream of playing tennis with Pat in a tourna¬ 
ment where the prize was a delicately carved 
seal ring, which Boblee had seen before. Just 
as Pat was slipping it on her finger Dr. Tomlin 
said in a loud voice: “It’s a snake, not a ring, 
and Boblee was so frightened that she woke 
and sat up stiffly in her bed, which appeared 
to be floating in a pool of white moonlight. 


132 


FULFILLMENT 


It was a few days after this, while Brent 
was still out of town, that Frances went to 
Morristown again to put the finishing touches 
to the house she had been busy upon some 
months earlier. She was to be away only two 
nights, and the servants would look after Bob- 
lee. If any complications arose she was to go 
for advice either to Dr. Tomlin or Aline, and 
on Saturday both Frances and Brent would 
be home. Busy at school, Boblee had no time 
to be lonely, and late the second day Aline 
called her up on the telephone. 

“ Boblee, Frances told me to keep an eye on 
you. I’m going out to dinner to-night with Mr. 
Cunningham and Warner McKim. Alice Lane 
was to be the fourth, but she’s ill and can’t 
come. Don’t you want to take her place?” 

Boblee still disliked Cunningham, but an 
evening with Warner McKim was another mat¬ 
ter, and she said quickly: 

“It’s Friday night and I don’t see why I 
shouldn’t. Aunt Frances told me to consult 
you or Dr. Tomlin, if anything came up—” 

“That’s all right, then,” said Aline. We’ll 
come for you—probably in a taxi—at seven. 
So be ready, and look your prettiest.” 

Boblee was uplifted at the prospect, yet she 
found time for a note to Pat: incidentally 
Frances had forbidden those two meeting, but 
had said nothing about letters, so Boblee wrote 
frequently, and Pat’s answers were eminently 
satisfactory. She wrote to-day: 


BOBLEE 


133 


“Oh, Pat, I do wish you were here this minute! 
However, Aunt Frances says you may come over 
next week, if you can get off. I think she’s over 
her ‘mad,’ though I had to promise her—you can 
guess what—and we’ve got to be awfully wise, un¬ 
less you want to talk to Uncle Brent. I can’t, or 
she’d think I was tattling. Perhaps you’d better 
not, either. Anyway nobody can prevent my liking 
you more than any one, always! But even Aunt 
Frances wouldn’t muddle things this way if she only 
understood —not just us, but it!” 

This lucid letter despatched, and her mathe¬ 
matics and English disposed of, since Boblee 
hoped that Brent might be home by Saturday 
and ready for a long drive, she got into a new 
blue frock which Josie, the maid, admired and 
adjusted. 

“It makes you look like a grown-up young 
lady/’ Josie announced. “And the gentle¬ 
men’s going to act according!” She added 
casually, as she pinned down a stray curl of 
Boblee’s red-brown hair. “But for my part I 
like Mr. Pat best.” 

“Of course!” said Boblee. “So do I!” 

Josie looked astute. “He won’t like you 
less, Miss Boblee, because the other gentlemen 
see how handsome you are—that almighty Mr. 
McKim, for instance! They’re all alike—men 
—running after the women that other men 
pays attention to. It’s not just pretty looks as 
matters, but getting ’em advertised right—like 
cleaning powders and soap!” 


134 


FULFILLMENT 


Boblee laughed, yet she was sure that Pat 
was not like this, but Josie was a philosopher in 
love with her own wisdom, so Boblee refrained 
from comment or contradiction. Standing be¬ 
fore her Aunt Frances’ full length mirror, the 
girl admired her tall figure in the gay frock 
with gold colored butterflies a-flutter about the 
hem, her gleaming dark hair and brilliant color 
contrasting with the prevailing tints of rose 
and gold. 

Despite her slim fines, Boblee’s arms and 
throat were already rounded and unexpectedly 
fair, a tiny brown mole just above her breast 
accenting that luminous whiteness, while her 
broad shoulders and unusual height added to 
her effectiveness. With none of Frances’ per¬ 
fection of features and blonde delicacy, or of 
Aline’s indescribable feminine lure, the girl 
was not merely fresh and young but distin¬ 
guished, with a promise of greater distinction 
to come. In many ways she suggested Brent, 
a resemblance of which she was inordinately 
proud. 

At a little after seven the taxicab arrived, 
and she ran down the front steps, an evening 
cape over her shoulders, every curl and ribbon 
dancing. Her dark eyes were full of friendly 
welcome, and the three people in the cab looked 
at her with surprised appreciation. Warner 
McKim sprang out and handed her in with 
what the young sentimentalist secretly de¬ 
scribed to herself as “a courtly grace,” re- 


BOBLEE 


135 


minding her irresistibly of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
and Queen Elizabeth, and other dramatic and 
fascinating scenes and people. Even Cunning¬ 
ham’s presence could not dampen her delight 
at being treated by both men with the flatter¬ 
ing attention usually given to grown women, 
women like Aline. 

They drove to a famous small hotel, and in a 
private dining room a suave waiter and a chef 
from the kitchen greeted Cunningham in vocif¬ 
erous French, quite as though he owned the 
house and all it contained. Presently he left 
them, to return with the French boy carrying 
reverently several cobwebbed bottles. The 
next hour Boblee enjoyed with the healthy 
pleasure youth takes in good food and gay talk, 
although she remembered a promise she had 
made Brent some months earlier, and did not 
even taste the bubbling gold in her thin glass. 
In their expensive privacy they could hear the 
gay music in the public dining room, and Cun¬ 
ningham and Aline danced between courses 
with an abandon Boblee thought pretty in 
Aline but rather awful in the stout elderly man 
with the dyed hair and conspicuous waistline. 
And yet she told herself that he was kind. He 
had thoroughly appreciated her new frock, and 
had given her a lovely present as a memento 
of the evening, a silver ornament for the hair 
in the shape of an arrow. 

Later Mr. McKim showed her a new step, but 
as they danced she was conscious of being a 


136 


FULFILLMENT 


little worried. Uncle Brent had wine too, 
packed in a locked closet in the attic, and on 
special occasions it was served for guests. 
But she had never seen exactly this sort of con¬ 
viviality, Aline actually hilarious, and Cun¬ 
ningham telling stories with a ponderous so¬ 
lemnity which seemed to amuse the other two 
inordinately, though Boblee usually found them 
pointless. To the girl McKim seemed reas¬ 
suringly dignified and quiet. In fact he grew 
more dignified as the minutes—and the wine— 
passed. But he swung Boblee lightly about 
the narrow room, making her feel small 
and fairy-like, always a delightful sensation. 
If she flinched from being held quite so 
tightly, she told herself that he was nothing to 
Cunningham. 

It was nearly eleven when at last Aline said 
that they must go home, that Cunningham was 
much too hospitable and that she had a head¬ 
ache. In the taxicab she really seemed ill, and 
it was decided that she must be taken home 
first. When Boblee offered to go up with her 
she insisted that she would be all right, that 
Boblee must go home to bed. At Aline’s apart¬ 
ment house Cunningham got out to see her 
safely upstairs, where the maid would look af¬ 
ter her; he would telephone for another taxi¬ 
cab to take him to Bryant Park. So McKim 
was left to take Boblee home. After speaking 
to the chauffeur he got back into the taxicab. 

The girl remembered how much she had liked 


BOBLEE 


137 


Mr. McKim that first evening, but tonight she 
did not like him at all. He was still hand¬ 
some, but her limited vocabulary fell back 
again on that overworked word “queer.’* He 
sat very close, telling her in highly colored 
language what a little beauty she was, how 
much he admired her, and how glad he was to 
have her to himself, at last—how he had waited 
for just this moment. 

She assured herself that it was all just as the 
magazine stories described it: these people 
were merely drunk, but then she had never 
seen drunkenness before, and she wished she 
were home. How furious Brent would he, and 
Pat, if they knew she were driving home at this 
hour with a man she hardly knew. Of course 
she wasn’t frightened, she really was quite able 
to take care of herself, and yet . . . 

It should have taken but a few minutes for 
the ride from Aline’s to the house in Eleventh 
Street, but it was taking longer. Actually they 
must be going miles out of the way. Then 
Boblee forgot to watch for the lights on the 
dark side street. McKim had his arm around 
her, then both arms; he was saying things 
about the little mole on her neck; he was kiss¬ 
ing her in a way she had never been kissed be¬ 
fore, a horrible way. She struggled in his 
arms, silently: an appeal to the chauffeur 
would have been disgraceful, and she had a 
sick horror of screaming. She knew that the 
sound of her own voice would terrify her. . . . 


138 


FULFILLMENT 


Yet she might have to scream, she might have to 
leap from the car. She thought of Pat with a 
terrible longing, as one sinking in deep water 
thinks of safe land. . . . 

It seemed to her endless, that ride, a hideous 
nightmare, and then at last she heard McKim *s 
voice, suddenly sobered, frightened: 

‘ ‘ My God! Put that away, you little tigress! 
Pm not going to hurt you.” 

Boblee heard her own voice, amazingly quiet 
and cool. 

“No, you are not. I can take care of myself. 
Tell the driver to take me home. ...” 

It was almost incredible, his implicit obedi¬ 
ence, so that the taxicab turned a corner and 
finally reached the Avenue again, heading 
southward. Sitting stiffly erect and still, in 
her corner, Roberta Appleton clutched in her 
hand the silver arrow Cunningham had given 
her. She had taken it from her hair, instinc¬ 
tively, without thought or plan, and McKim ’s 
face was bleeding. He was nervously mop¬ 
ping it with a handkerchief, mopping and 
mopping. . . . 

The ride seemed interminable, but at last 
they were in Eleventh Street, before her own 
door. Boblee, without speaking, without one 
glance at the man with the bleeding face, 
opened the door of the car, slipped out, and 
then ran up the steps of the beloved little 
house. Never before had it seemed so pre¬ 
cious, a haven of safety. She carried her key 


BOBLEE 


139 


in the pocket of her cloak, and the door opened 
swiftly. Once upstairs in her room she 
snapped on all the lights and went straight to 
the mirror. Her frock was disheveled, her 
hair loosened, her cheeks flaming with a rage 
worse than any fever she had ever known. 
She told herself that she looked crazy—like one 
of those horrible Maenads old-fashioned artists 
were so fond of painting. 

As she undressed, slowly, conscious of aching 
muscles, and feeling as though she had been 
horribly sea-sick, she remembered what Fran¬ 
ces had said to her after that moment on the 
cliff. “But it isn’t Pat’s fault; it’s yours. 
Any nice girl can manage a man—if she wants 
to.” 

At the time Boblee had thought her aunt 
stupid. Pat was Pat. They weren’t openly 
engaged, but they loved each other. Aunt 
Frances simply didn’t understand. 

But now, as she crept into bed, she had a 
sick doubt of herself. Perhaps her aunt did 
understand, perhaps that hideous scene in the 
cab had been all her own fault. The other 
night she had let Warner McKim kiss her hand 
—and liked it. She had liked dancing with him, 
too, only a few hours ago, liked things he had 
said, about her frock and her face, almost liked 
that little shiver of excitement when he had 
first slipped an arm about her waist. And 
yet those things—the kiss on her hand, the gay 
compliments, the arm about her waist—must all 


140 


FULFILLMENT 


have prepared the way for that experience in 
the car, for that burning sensation of terror 
and rage and shame. Mr. McKim might even 
have thought she invited his horrible caresses! 
Well, he was not thinking so now. . . . 

Boblee remembered her mother with a pas¬ 
sion of longing—surely if she had lived the 
thing would not have happened, or, if it had, 
Boblee could have gone to her now—told her 
about it—found comfort and peace. And yet 
would even a mother understand? Aunt Fran¬ 
ces would say that it was her own fault, that a 
woman can always manage men. Perhaps 
that was true; perhaps Boblee was naturally 
dreadful, far, far worse than those silly 
school girls who went on petting parties with 
nice hoys of their own age. What, she won¬ 
dered, would Pat say? But could she tell Pat? 
Wasn’t it the sort of thing she could never tell 
any one? 

Hour after hour she lay still, wide eyed, for 
the first time in her life watching the darkness 
gradually diminish, and then lift, until bars of 
pink and orange sky and the increasing rumble 
of innumerable trucks proclaimed the coming 
of another day. 


m 


Before breakfast that Saturday morning 
the telephone rang, and Boblee answered 
it, feeling that her throat was made of brass, 
and her face of fire. She hoped it might be 
Brent on long distance, telling her when 
he would be home, perhaps asking her to 
meet him at the train. But it was Aline, and 
her voice sounded thin and shaky: 

“Boblee, are you all right? Well, I’m thank¬ 
ful. I was dreadfully ill last night—one of 
those neuralgic attacks I have sometimes. It’s 
still pretty bad. That was the only reason I 
let you go home without me. But of course I 
knew Mr. McKim would take good care of you.” 

There was a suggestion of waiting after this, 
and of something breathless in Aline’s manner. 
Boblee merely repeated her first assurance that 
she was all right, and Aline went on: 

“Do you mind not saying anything about it, 
Boblee? I mean to Frances or your uncle. 
They might not understand—I mean—” 

“I shan’t tell any one that I was even with 
you. So don’t worry.” 

Aline talked on, explanatory, apologetic, yet 
full also of ill-concealed curiosity. “She wants 
to know just what did happen,” the girl said to 
141 


142 


FULFILLMENT 


herself, 4 ‘and she shan't ever know—from me. 
But I'll never go anywhere with her again as 
long as I live." 

The one-sided conversation finished, and 
breakfast over, Boblee looked out at the rain, 
now a blustering, windy March downpour. A 
note from Frances said she would be back in 
the late afternoon, and Brent telephoned from 
the office that he was in town, but with an im¬ 
portant case on, so that he could not be home 
until late. Bobby felt depressingly solitary, 
and that doubt of herself was growing—the 
sick dread that Frances might be right, that 
when ugly things happened to a girl they were 
always her own fault. She evaded a talk with 
the philosophic Josie, slipped into a long coat 
and took a felt hat with a brim, and then went 
out into the rain, riding uptown on the bus, but 
striking into the Park at Fifty-Ninth Street. 

It was pouring, a cold slanting rain that 
somehow fitted her mood. She had no umbrella, 
but her hat brim turned the water and her coat 
was thick, so she plunged on, through mud and 
deepening puddles, the wind blowing her hair 
and cutting her face as with sharp whips. She 
seemed to have the Park to herself; not even 
the hardiest horseman was out to-day, nobody 
and nothing but an occasional squirrel crossing 
her path or poking a small inquisitive nose 
from a hollow tree. She went on and on: her 
feet were soaking, her skirt heavy, her very 
hair beneath the turned down brim was bright 


BOBLEE 


143 


with raindrops, but this struggle with the ele¬ 
ments was the one thing that made her black 
mood bearable. 

It seemed to her that things were irretriev¬ 
ably spoiled and soiled—her life, her relation 
to Pat—everything. If men were like that, as 
Aunt Frances had said, “all tarred with the 
same brush. . . .” Boblee cried angrily to the 
blustering wind: “But not Pat, not Uncle 
Brent !”■—and then quivered through and 
through her chilled body with the hateful fear 
that they too might be “like that.” Surely it 
was impossible; for one thing, they never took 
too much to drink. And yet—suppose they 
did! Suppose Aunt Frances really knew— 
suppose that, under the crust of convention and 
courtesy, all of them could change in a moment 
and become creatures you defended yourself 
from with anything you had handy. . . . Oh, 
but it was impossible! McKim, when drunk, 
at least, was unlike nice men. And yet how 
much did she know, after all, about men and 
life? 

She never had any idea how far she walked. 
It must have been miles, for she was drenched 
through and in a part of the Park she did not 
know, a rocky height that would have been 
beautiful on a sunny day or in a crisp snow. 
But now the world was sodden and gray, dank 
February back again. She was aware of being 
chilled through and of a pain that clutched her 
side. But she did not want to go home, back 


144 


FULFILLMENT 


to Josie, with Aunt Frances returning soon, 
full of small talk about periods and color 
schemes in a world that had become a travesty 
on that dear gay world which Boblee had 
trusted and loved. 

The girl stopped at last, staring at a rough 
building on a high rock that looked like a for¬ 
tress, at dripping trees and a wild sky, where 
black clouds ran before the wind. The rain 
had ceased for a moment, but the wind was 
stronger, cutting her with vicious whips, taking 
away breath and strength and the power to 
think straight. Boblee turned her back to the 
tempest she had been fighting, and put both 
arms about a young tree close to her path. 
What should she do, where should she go? 
What she wanted was warmth and quiet and 
peace, a place where nobody would ask ques¬ 
tions, or worry her with suggestions or with 
foolish irrelevant talk. She thought of Peter 
Tomlin, but he was a doctor, and her Uncle 
Brent’s friend; he might feel it his duty to 
probe into her tired mind, to try to find out 
why she was wandering about in the rain in 
this crazy fashion. No, Dr. Pete wouldn’t do. 

It was then that she knew in a flash exactly 
what she wanted, the person who could under¬ 
stand and help. She would go to Miss Mar¬ 
lowe, to that wise kind Diana who always un¬ 
derstood without lengthy explanations. Shel¬ 
ter and rest in the little apartment, a fire, warm 
dry clothes—Boblee decided that life might 


BOBLEE 


145 


again seem worth while if she could reach this 
haven. And for a few hours nobody need 
know where she was. 

She was hack on a beaten thoroughfare at 
last, feeling curiously fagged and spent. It 
was ridiculous, this fatigue—she wished a taxi 
would come, but the few people she saw were 
evidently hurrying for shelter as the rain be¬ 
gan to fall again. Apparently the only per¬ 
sons who drove through Central Park on 
stormy days were people with their own cars. 
At last an empty taxicab! The girl knew a 
sort of pale triumph as she gave the address 
to the chauffeur, even gave him Miss Marlowe’s 
name. For some obscure reason it was a 
comfort to leave things to him, to stop 
thinking. . . . 


Saturday afternoon was a halcyon time for 
Diana Marlowe, for then she was no longer a 
teacher of English but a freelance writer, at 
liberty to follow her own bent. It was on Sat¬ 
urdays and Sundays that she scribbled verse 
with a soft pencil on yellow paper, sometimes 
in furious haste, sometimes dreamily and de¬ 
liberately. Or she wrote on her typewriter, 
getting her story on paper as rapidly as her 
strong fingers could manipulate the keys. It 
was enchanting, to belong to yourself, to do 
what you liked, feeling as unpractical as a 
woodchuck or a bobolink! For who could say 


146 


FULFILLMENT 


whether you would sell the poem or place the 
story? The odds were that both might fail 
to meet with editorial approval. One never 
knew. But the thrill of creation was the one 
thing that seemed worth having nowadays. 
Since her talk with Dr. Tomlin, and his pre¬ 
scription, she had been sleeping better, working 
more happily at school, and, for the rest, living 
in her imagination rather than in those haunt¬ 
ing, stinging memories. 

On this wild March Saturday Diana was fin¬ 
ishing a short, swift-moving tale that had ap¬ 
peared to write itself, and it seemed to her 
that the thing had a reason for existing, and 
a touch of real beauty. Usually she was 
sharply critical of her work, once it was down, 
but she had discovered that while you are doing 
imaginative work you must let Pegasus take his 
own course. Later the critical faculty may 
assert itself, but not upon the eager uptrail of 
sheer creation. 

She wrote swiftly and afterward read the 
full pages with a surprising exultation. For 
they might have been written by some one else, 
somebody using her as a lawyer or scientist 
might use a dictaphone. And though she 
looked for blunders, overwriting, she was 
startled to realize how fresh and true and un¬ 
hackneyed the tale was—or seemed, to-day. 
To-morrow she would find a hundred things to 
alter. . . . 

When she had reread the last paragraph she 


BOBLEE 


147 


rose to her feet and raised her arms above her 
head in a long slow gesture. Oh, she was 
learning the game, and she had things of her 
own to say, things that must get themselves 
into crisp words—and crisper print! Beyond 
that one could not tell. ... 

Suddenly her hell rang, one of those bells 
down many flights which always seem so mys¬ 
terious. She went into the tiny kitchen, pushed 
a button, and presently a tall young man in 
uniform was asking: 

“Is this Miss Marlowe?” 

Diana admitted that it was, and the youth 
said casually: 

“ There’s a lady downstairs, in my car—and 
she’s kind of fainted. She told me to bring her 
here, hut I reckon you’ll have to help me get 
her upstairs. She’s pretty young, and no 
heavyweight, hut she’s tall, and I ain’t sure I 
can manage her by herself, for three flights.” 

Mystified and alarmed, Diana followed the 
spry young man down the stairway to the 
street. Staring at the inert face with closed 
eyes of the tall girl in the taxicab she gave an 
exclamation of amazement. Then she was in 
the car feeling Boblee’s pulse, listening to her 
heart, then to her heavy breathing. 

“We’ve got to get her up,” she announced 
firmly, and between them they managed the 
three flights, with Boblee still oblivious. 

Ten minutes later Diana had the soaking 
clothes off, and the girl in bed, hot bottles at 


148 


FULFILLMENT 


her feet and back. Then she telephoned for 
Dr. Tomlin, and was about to call up Brent 
Appleton at his office, when a voice, hoarse and 
pleading, came from the little bedroom: 

‘ 6 Miss Marlowe, don’t telephone Unc’ Brent 
yet! Please wait a little. They won’t worry 
until to-night. I don’t think they’re home yet, 
anyhow. ’ ’ 

Diana replaced the receiver and went into 
the bedroom. Boblee was sitting up, cheeks 
very red, brown eyes blazing, and her hands 
ice-cold and shaking. Diana sat down on the 
bed and put both arms around the shivering 
figure. 

‘‘Boblee, darling, what is it?” 

But Boblee asked hoarsely: “Did you pay 
the taxi-driver, Miss Marlowe?” 

“Of course. And Boblee, dear, I’m glad 
you came to me—so glad! Only—” 

The girl was lying in her friend’s arms, her 
eyes shut, her heart hammering, her cheeks a 
deep alarming crimson. She said slowly: 

“Oh, it’s so bully—being here—Diana.” 
She added after a long pause: “If you don’t 
mind my calling you that? I always do— 
inside. ’ ’ 

Diana laughed softly and stroked the girl’s 
hot cheek. 

‘ ‘ Child, you may call me anything you please 
—if you just won’t get ill.” 

Boblee sighed with satisfaction, and lay silent 


BOBLEE 


149 


for some time. Later, as Diana was adjusting 
the hot water bottles, Boblee opened her eyes, 
looked into her friend’s lovely concerned face, 
and murmured: 

“Diana, do you think things are always our 
faultf I mean things between men and women. 
And are all men ‘tarred with the same brush’—• 
truly?” 

Diana’s intuition leaped ahead of her mind, 
clutched at some painful adventure, some sick¬ 
ening fear. Something or somebody had hurt 
the child horribly, twisted all her values. . . . 

“Boblee, darling, there never was a worse 
lie than that, since the beginning of the world! 
Some men are horrible: with such men no 
woman is safe—from misunderstanding or in¬ 
sult, if not from actual bodily harm. But 
others, real men—darling, the right kind of 
man would rather die than touch a woman if 
she didn’t want him to!” 

Boblee sighed a little, then shivered, as that 
terrible knife turned over in her side. 

“But if she makes him think she wants him 
to—and yet she really doesn } t —are things her 
fault, then?” 

The older girl’s touch was firm, reassuring. 

“Of course not, silly! Why Boblee, there’s 
a kind of man who doesn’t want to under¬ 
stand—who prefers to believe that all women 
are ‘ tarred with the same brush!’ But what 
he thinks, or pretends to think, doesn’t make a 


150 


FULFILLMENT 


thing so! Dear, remember this, always —no¬ 
body in the world can ever really hurt us, no¬ 
body but ourselves!” 

The child twisted her face away, and Diana 
saw that she was crying. It was at this point 
that Tomlin rang the bell, and a moment later 
he was in the room. Despite that dreadful 
pain, Boblee knew she liked Peter more than 
she had ever liked him before, because, after 
a brief colloquy with Diana, he asked Boblee 
herself not one question. After his exami¬ 
nation he told Diana that he would send some 
medicine, and a nurse, and that he would notify 
Brent. “For she ought not to be moved, Miss 
Marlowe—that is, if you think you can keep her 
overnight, perhaps for a day or two.” 

“Keep her,” said Diana indignantly, “I’d 
like to see any one take her away.” Boblee 
heard the Doctor laugh, then the sharp knife 
demanded her entire attention; she forgot 
everything but her effort not to scream, or 
groan out loud, like some silly coward. . . . 


Late that afternoon, Brent Appleton, to his 
own astonishment, walked into the bedroom of 
a strange apartment, there to find Boblee alter¬ 
nately shivering and complaining of being “so 
hot” under a rose-colored silken spread. He 
had been met at the door by a nurse in uniform, 
and Boblee greeted him quite without enthusi¬ 
asm, he was afraid without recognition, but 


BOBLEE 


151 


with a little sob because of “the knife in her 
side.” To Brent she looked lovely, and not ill 
at all, just extraordinarily mature, and with 
more color than usual in her cheeks, but her 
rambling speech shocked him. She said in a 
hoarse croak, incredibly unlike the voice he 
remembered. 

“You see, he was nice, at first, but his eyes 
pop, like a toad’s—oh, no, he mustn’t touch me! 
He mustn’t, he mustn’t!” 

Brent drew back from the bed, appalled, but 
the little nurse laid a quieting hand on Roberta, 
and said calmly: 

“She doesn’t know you, Mr. Appleton. For 
the last hour she’s been delirious. After the 
medicine’s taken effect and she’s had some 
sleep she may be quite normal. Dr. Tomlin 
thinks he can manage the pneumonia—which 
is the worst we have to fear, now.” 

“Pneumonia!” said Brent. “Boblee with 
pneumonia . . . why, she’s never been ill— 
she’s as strong as a young horse—she doesn’t 
look ill.” 

Boblee from the bed said slowly, in a con¬ 
versational voice: 

“It’s too wet even for squirrels to be out. 
But I like it. I like being alone. Walking in 
the puddles cools you off, and then you see I’ve 
got my silver arrow. You needn’t be afraid 
of anything when you’ve got that.” 

The nurse made a gesture with her hand and 
Brent backed out of the little room, very care- 


152 


FULFILLMENT 


fully. Boblee still rambled on, saying that she 
never drank wine, that it made you queer, that 
the chauffeur looked like a toad. . . . She 
hated toads. . . . But then, of course, you 
could always kill them, with silver arrows. . . . 

In the outer room Brent sat down heavily. 
Not for the first time he was confessing 
to himself that the most important person 
in his universe was this young, tall tomboy 
niece of his, talking nonsense in some other 
woman’s blue and white room. . . . 

He remembered Frances, that she existed, 
and was away—that was all. He recalled 
Aline, and for an instant he wished that she 
would come to him, feeling that her presence 
might be vaguely comforting. Then he knew 
that he did not want her to come, did not want 
Boblee and Aline associated in any way: they 
did not belong together. Yet, what a hypo¬ 
crite, what a puling Pharisee he was, presum¬ 
ing to decide whom Boblee should or should 
not associate with. ... At this juncture some 
one came into the room. He heard a contralto 
voice, roughened by a slight huskiness: 

“Mr. Appleton, I suppose I must introduce 
myself: I’m Boblee’s English teacher, Diana 
Marlowe. And I can’t tell you how glad I am 
she came here. We’re rather special chums, 
Boblee and I.” 

Brent was standing, looking at this tall young 
woman in a dark coat and hat; she had just 
come back from the drug store at the corner, 


BOBLEE 


153 


and the cold rain having turned to sleet, bright 
drops clung to her clothing and to the springy 
tendrils of her dark hair. Her face, fresh and 
pink from the open, seemed to him curiously 
familiar as he took her hand, hut his memory 
refused to supply the link in the chain of 
association. 

“Boblee has told us a great deal about you, 
Miss Marlowe.’’ 

“ Boblee’s a good booster, Mr. Appleton. 
She’s made Uncle Brent sound wonderful— 
only this is a hard way for us to be meeting.” 

She excused herself for an instant—the 
nurse might need what she had brought from 
the drug store. When she came back she was 
without her hat and coat, dressed in a straight 
simple frock of golden brown. She dropped 
into a chair facing him, after putting a log on 
the fire. He saw now that she looked older 
than he had thought her, that there were little 
lines about the dark eyes and the firm beauti¬ 
ful mouth. Again he wondered why he seemed 
to recognize her smile. 

“The nurse thinks Boblee is going to sleep. 
For the moment the pain is better. But I’m 
afraid we’re in for a bad time, Mr. Appleton. 
Dr. Tomlin says both lungs are affected—that 
means double pneumonia. But of course her 
splendid constitution is all in her favor. ’ ’ 

Brent did not speak, and they sat motionless 
in front of a gay little fire of crackling pine. 
He had that feeling we all experience, occasion- 


154 


FULFILLMENT 


ally, of having known from the beginning that 
exactly this was to happen, to Boblee, to him¬ 
self, to the tall woman in the golden brown 
frock. If Boblee had to walk for miles in the 
rain, and get pneumonia, it was the most natu¬ 
ral thing in the world that she should drive in 
a taxicab straight to Miss Diana Marlowe! 
The queer thing was that he was glad it had 
happened just this way. Boblee’s place, well 
or ill, was in his own comfortable house. Yet 
he knew that by right of choice, and of spirit¬ 
ual kinship, Boblee belonged infinitely more to 
this tall, grav-eyed girl, with the sweet mouth 
and obstinate chin, than she could ever belong 
to Frances. 

The days crept by reluctantly; the rain 
passed and the wintry sun shone; the great city 
followed its accustomed round, was ugly and 
cruel, commonplace, sardonic, beautiful,—while 
hour after hour a handful of people fought for 
the life of a thin big-eyed child who grew thin¬ 
ner and bigger-eyed each day. 

Brent went to the office every morning, and 
left it early in the afternoon, his work half 
done, his partners solicitous and kindly; his 
stenographer, Miss Gail, performing miracles, 
taking dictation which Brent knew to be utterly 
nonsensical, yet turning out letters extraordi¬ 
narily normal and coordinate. ... It was cu¬ 
rious, he told himself, how some women under- 


BOBLEE 


155 


stood, without asking questions. He could talk 
to Miss Gail about Boblee, and feel the better 
for it: somehow she knew the right thing to 
say, the things to leave unsaid. But Frances 
almost drove him wild: she wanted to nurse 
Boblee herself, although Dr. Tomlin decreed 
that she must not even see the patient. Brent 
had never dreamed that she cared so for the 
child; it was at once an irritation and a vague 
consolation to realize that she was more deeply 
affected than he had ever known her to be. 
But she resented the fact that Boblee was ill in 
another woman’s apartment, resented Tomlin’s 
insistence that the girl could not be moved nor 
nursed by anyone but experts. There were two 
nurses now, and Diana had found a room in the 
same house, where she could be at hand when 
Boblee asked for her—as she frequently did — 4 
and at the same time go on with her school 
work. The apartment had been turned into an 
efficient if tiny hospital, and for two weeks only 
the nurses, the Doctor, Brent, and Diana were 
allowed to pass the threshold. 

During this period Brent received many 
notes from Aline, short, discreet, yet full of 
sympathy. Wouldn’t he feel better if he came 
around some evening and talked things out? 
She missed him horribly, yet of course he must 
do only what he wanted to do, at this time. 
She made no comment upon Tomlin’s hand¬ 
ling of the case, asked few questions, was tact- 


156 


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ful and comprehending. Over the telephone 
Brent explained that he could not come until 
Boblee had turned the corner, that both Tomlin 
and the child herself seemed more comfortable 
when he was in the apartment, and that what 
time he could spare must be spent at the office. 
One afternoon, when he had called from a pub¬ 
lic booth, Aline’s voice was especially kind, and 
Brent was touched when she said: 

“It’s only, Brent, that I want to help because 
I—care so much! ’’ 

He thanked her; told her that in a little while 
the crisis would be passed; and then, when she 
asked, “But don’t you want to see me, Brent ?’’* 
he lied like a gentleman: 

“Of course I do, Aline. It’s just—oh, can’t 
you understand?” 

Aline said that she did, that it was all right, 
that she was sure Boblee would soon be safe, 
and then they would be so happy. . . . 

He left the telephone feeling sore, humili¬ 
ated. He might be an unfaithful husband, but 
lying was not his strong suit. For he knew 
that he had not the faintest desire to see Aline, 
that for the time his one interest in life was 
that thin long figure, tossing upon Diana Mar¬ 
lowe ’s white bed. . . . And then some malicious 
imp seemed to whisper into his ear that sar¬ 
donic couplet—how did it run? 

“The Devil was ill, the Devil a monk would be; 

The Devil got well, the devil a monk was he. . . .” 


BOBLEE 


157 


Later that same week he sat again by Di¬ 
ana’s fire, knowing that the life in the next 
room was at a low ebb. Tomlin and the nurse 
were there; beside Brent sat Diana, pale and 
quiet. For an hour they had waited, talking in 
low tones; earlier in the afternoon Pat had 
been allowed to see Boblee, but she had not 
known him. Diana told Brent of the boy’s 
pale, dogged face and pleading eyes. 

“Boblee has told me about him, and I knew 
he must be fine. But in spite of his youth and 
his rather rare self control one sees in him hor¬ 
rible capacity for suffering. I’ve never felt 
sorrier for any one.” 

Brent experienced a jealous pang. That boy 
—why, he had his whole life ahead! If Boblee 
died he would grieve for a while, and then 
marry some other girl: they would have their 
life together, and their children. It would be as 
though Boblee had never lived. He said some¬ 
thing like this, adding: 

“Be sorry for me, Miss Marlowe. It’s I who 
need her most. She’s the one thing in my life 
that really—counts!” 

He felt the direct look of the clear gray eyes 
and added, a note of bitterness in his voice: 

“Although, measured by Boblee’s code, I’m 
a cheat! I don’t deserve to have her get well. 
Knowing me as I ain would kill her love for 
me.” 

By the inflection of his voice he might have 
been discussing the weather, yet she knew that 


158 


FULFILLMENT 


he meant what he said. She had rarely seen a 
face so wretched. 

“How little you understand us—the way 
women are made,” she said quietly. “Boblee 
couldn’t stop loving you if she tried. It’s not 
what people do but what they are, to us, that 
makes us care.” She added after a pauses 
“And perhaps we’re all more alike than you 
realize, men and women—” 

Alike—he and Boblee! That was all she 
knew about it. It surprised him that he should 
be talking in this way to a stranger. Yet he 
went on, dispassionately: 

“Understand, Miss Marlowe, I’m not posing 
as a penitent. For years life has cheated me, 
and I’ve no scruples as to my own way of play¬ 
ing the game—except when I seem to have cut 
myself off from Boblee!” 

His listener watched him as he sat leaning a 
little forward in his chair, somber, brutally 
honest, and somehow impersonal. It was as 
though he were speaking not to a woman whom 
he knew, however slightly, but to some timeless, 
incurious, yet comprehending spirit. She rec¬ 
ognized this impersonality, and it gave her free¬ 
dom and assurance. 

“I don’t believe you have cut yourself off 
from her,” she said, “but I think I know how 
you feel. After all we are only big children, 
all of us, and if a child is denied a thing repeat¬ 
edly, unreasonably, it sometimes snatches it.” 

Brent met her grave eyes. She seemed to 


BOBLEE 


159 


discount his bitter mood, to intimate that she 
did not take his self-accusation too seriously. 
Her personality was quieting, beneficent, a lit¬ 
tle like the sensitive sympathy he had known 
while his mother was still living. Again it 
seemed wholly natural that Boblee, ill and un¬ 
happy, should have come to this woman. For 
he recognized her as one of those people whom 
you instinctively trust, not merely their honor, 
but their tact, their capacity to put themselves 
in your place, their spiritual integrity. 

“It comes hard now—that I didn’t realize 
how much she meant when I had her,” he said. 
“I was a fool, if only because I hurt my own 
power to enjoy the child. For months she’s 
been a touchstone—whenever I saw her or 
thought of her I secretly doubted the lasting 
quality of the thing I had seized, though I 
called it happiness. Do you see what I 
mean?” 

Diana met his look: “Yes. I think Boblee 
has been that to me too, a touchstone. She 
would always make real things seem more real, 
and false things more—foolish.” 

Brent lowered his eyes and looked at the fire. 
Yes, that was the word. He had lived in a 
fool’s paradise for months—had taken all 
Aline had to give, and believed that he was con¬ 
tent. Yet in the light of the flickering lamp 
which was Boblee’s frail life, and of her stain¬ 
less integrity, the thing he and Aline had called 
love seemed a passing whim of the body, as un- 


160 


FULFILLMENT 


related to the inner personality of a man—the 
thing people called soul, for want of a better 
term—as the tinsel on a Christmas tree com¬ 
pares with snow on the mountain top. Foolish 
was the word, the small, slight, just word which 
expressed the futility of that secret garden of 
his as no other word could express it. 

The nurse came into the room. She was a 
little plain woman, dark and wiry, and usually 
impersonal, yet now her eyelids were red and 
her thin hands trembled. She said in a low 
voice: 

“Mr. Appleton, Miss Marlowe, I can’t be 
sure, but I think. . . . Anyhow you’d better 
come.” 

They went into the bedroom; Brent felt Di¬ 
ana Marlowe’s firm hand, felt her fingers close 
about his arm as they went close to the narrow 
bed. 

Lying back against white pillows not whiter 
than her thin face, the girl suggested some 
young knight of the middle ages, with her close- 
cropped dark hair and passionless features— 
more regular than they had ever seemed when 
animated by her joyous and changing moods— 
the long line of her throat showing above the 
silken V of her cream-colored sleeping suit. 
Her great dark eyes were closed, but they 
opened, just as Brent knelt beside the bed. 
She was too weak to speak, but for the first time 
in days Brent felt that she knew him. The 
tiniest smile flitted across her face, her lips 


BOBLEE 


161 


moved, although they could hear no sound. 
The nurse whispered to Diana: 

“It’s often so—they recognize people—at 
the end.” 

Diana slipped from the room, leaving those 
two facing each other, with sharpened features 
and serious eyes, singularly alike. 

Brent never knew why he said what he did, 
why it seemed to him the one thing he must say. 
Touching Boblee’s cropped head with his fin¬ 
gers, very lightly, he spoke in a clear resonant 
voice: 

“Dear, you’ve frightened us all, dreadfully. 
You’ve been very ill. But now you’re going to 
get well. I need you, Boblee, to take care of 
me. You see, nobody else can, my darling!” 

He wondered if she understood him, almost 
if she still breathed, and then he saw her 
thinned features relax into a tiny smile, child¬ 
like, poignant. The lips moved again and 
bending nearer he heard a low murmur that 
was hardly a whisper: 

“Truly, Brent?” 

He forced his lips into a stiff smile. “Truly, 
darling. But you must try, you must help 
yourself. Do you understand?” 

The faint smile deepened perceptibly and 
Brent leaned closer. 

“Boblee, darling, you must try to get well, 
want to get well! I can’t get along without 
you. But you will have to help yourself, you 
will have to fight!” 


162 


FULFILLMENT 


It seemed to him that her eyes met his under- 
standingly and that her lips formed words, but 
he could not be sure. Presently her lids 
drooped, and the dark lashes lay quietly upon 
the colorless oval cheeks. Brent, holding his 
breath, could hear his own heart throb, but not 
hers. As he knelt there, afraid to move, Dr. 
Tomlin came in quietly from the hall. Brent 
waited, it seemed for hours, while the physician 
bent over the inert figure, once so vividly alive, 
now as still and remote as some effigy of youth, 
sculptured in marble. Even in that moment it 
seemed to Brent absurd, even grotesque, that 
this translucent and lovely stillness should be 
Boblee! At last the Doctor lifted his grizzled 
head and turned toward the man who waited so 
patiently. 


IV 


“Her pulse is stronger/’ said Tomlin. “I 
can’t be certain, but I believe there is still a 
fighting chance, that she may make the turn 
to-day. ’ ’ 

He spoke to the nurse, but he looked at his 
friend, this haggard and harassed man who 
still knelt beside the bed. The two faced each 
other, without word or gesture, and yet it was 
as though Peter were saying: “I’ve done my 
best for you, Brent. I’ve worked over this 
child you love with all my skill, all the hope 
that is hard to keep burning because it has been 
extinguished so often in the past. And I have 
left no remedy untried, no professional expe¬ 
dient neglected. Yet when we have done our 
utmost we physicians are not as gods. I am 
only a fallible man, like yourself.” 

Something like this was in the doctor’s mind, 
and as Brent got up he touched Peter’s shoul¬ 
der and said aloud: 

‘ ‘ Old Peter, I know you ’re doing your best— 
whatever comes—” 


He found himself in the living room, beside 
an open window, a little dizzy, and feeling hu- 

163 


164 


FULFILLMENT 


miliated at his uselessness. Then he saw Miss 
Marlowe close to him, a glass in her hand. She 
said gently, 44 Drink it,” and he obeyed. In an 
instant the blood was jumping through his 
veins and he felt no longer flabby and effemi¬ 
nate, like some poor devil of a drunkard getting 
off a prolonged spree, but sane, confident that 
life still could be borne. 

Later on, the nurse, looking no longer wooden 
but faintly pink and smiling, told him that Miss 
Koberta had taken her nourishment and gone 
to sleep again: the doctor would be back in the 
evening. 

Twenty-four hours later Brent was assured 
that Boblee was really out of acute danger and 
on the up-curve, but so weak that she slept most 
of the time. Looking at Diana’s eager shining 
eyes above her hollowed cheeks Brent knew 
that he really believed her, that a dull weight 
was lifted from him at last. Then he heard 
her add, very gently: 

“Mr. Appleton, I wish you would go out and 
get some air. You have lost sleep for weeks, 
and a walk would help.’ y 

“And you—how much sleep have you been 
getting?” 

“Then I need it too,” she replied. “We’ll 
go together.” 

On the Avenue, under an early spring sky 
that was incredibly blue, almost the blue of 
Italy, Brent felt refreshed, no longer keyed to 
the breaking point. The past twenty-four 


BOBLEE 


165 


hours, of daring yet fearing to hope, had been 
almost harder than the preceding weeks. Feel¬ 
ing to-day something almost like certainty—■ 
with this clean air against his face—was heal¬ 
ing, renewing. But he noticed that his com¬ 
panion walked without spring or zest and that 
she was very pale, so he signaled a taxicab. 
She got in, after a moment’s protest; he gave 
the order to the chauffeur, and they slid 
smoothly into the bright stream of traffic mov¬ 
ing up-town, the charm of the city in one of its 
lighter moments catching them up in a whirl 
of motion and color and vivid sunlight. 

It was a long time before either spoke. 
Now that for Boblee the future seemed 
real, and not a mockery, these two who loved 
her were passive, beyond words. 

At last, as they were spinning through the 
park beside a lake that reflected the blue of the 
sky, Diana said dreamily, as though thinking 
aloud: 

“Isn’t it wonderful, the way Boblee’s living 
on will count to the world—the things she will 
do—the man she’ll some day marry, and the 
children she may have?” 

Brent looked at the clear profile beside him 
as her voice went on: 

“I suppose more than anything it’s the 
dreadful feeling of waste—when the young and 
lovely die. ...” 

The sadness of her voice made him forget 
his own problems for an instant and wonder 


166 


FULFILLMENT 


about hers. She was the kind of woman, he 
thought, who usually marries young—the kind 
to whom men turn instinctively and who are al¬ 
ways at home with children. The fact that she 
was not married suggested possibilities of loss, 
or of unfulfilment. 

“I’m afraid, Miss Marlowe, that you would 
hardly have known how to help other people 
so—if you hadn’t been badly hurt, yourself.” 

Yet he had hardly spoken the words before 
he wished them unsaid. This adventuring into 
the debatable land of personalities was a mis¬ 
take, he told himself. For Brent was no ex¬ 
ception to the rule which governs the emotional 
life of most men, who will accept, and even 
seek, sympathy from a woman—discussing 
with her their own perplexing problems—and 
who yet instinctively shy off from being told 
her private griefs and disappointments. 

Boblee’s English teacher thought she under¬ 
stood that slight change of expression, that 
suggestion of a desire to retreat from the dan¬ 
ger of intimate revelation. She smiled, and 
ignored his tentative little speech. Pointing 
to a great tree they were passing, sharply out¬ 
lined against the bright sky, she said casually: 

“Look at the buds, the new leaves—and 
there’s a bird’s nest in the top! Spring is 
amazing—always a new thing. And yet isn’t 
there a beauty about trees in winter that’s even 
subtler, when you see them against the stinging 
loveliness of December’s cold skies?” 


BOBLEE 


167 


Brent agreed, rather absently. He was 
acutely aware that somehow she had divined 
his reluctance, that she understood him rather 
too well. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” he per¬ 
sisted. 

She met his glance, and if her eyes were kind 
there was an imp of irony in her smile. 

“Are you sure you wanted me to ? Men hate 
trouble. To them grief, looked back upon, 
seems morbid. And we’ve both been through 
enough suspense without digging into the past. 
Besides—” 

She left her sentence in midair, like some 
delicate web of thought, invisibly supported. 
He saw that her cheeks were flushed and 
repeated: 

“Besides?” 

“Oh, nothing,” she said, laughing a little at 
his obstinacy. “It’s just that I’ve recently 
found out why men hate to discuss emotions 
so much more than women do. ...” 

Interested in her theme he was also a little 
piqued. 

“Granting your initial premise—but only 
for the sake of the argument—why?” 

She chuckled softly. 

“Because by nature men are so much more 
emotional. Oh, yes they are! Only, you see, 
their having work to do—every day and all day 
—work that mentally absorbs them, gives them 
the advantage over most women. But give a 


168 


FULFILLMENT 


man and a woman like circumstances, the same 
tragic experience, and nine times out of ten the 
woman plods along, somehow, and it’s the man 
who kills himself, or marries within the year, 
or turns to drink, or drugs.” 

Brent considered this. 

“There’s something in what you say—or 
seems to be. And yet. ...” 

Diana’s eyes were on the river, which they 
were passing, a shining expanse of rough ice. 

“Don’t let’s try to he logical, Mr. Appleton. 
I’m probably wrong, anyway, and as a lawyer 
it’s your duty to object to generalities. But 
I’m afraid we must turn back, heavenly as this 
is. It must be dinner time.” 

Brent remembered Frances, whom he had not 
seen for two days. He had not telephoned her 
of Boblee’s improved condition, or told her 
that he would be home to dinner, for the first 
time in several days. And he knew that he did 
not want to go, did not want to see Frances, or 
even Aline, now. His nerves were still torn 
and ragged, sore to any alien touch. Only this 
friend of Boblee’s seemed to know how to act 
and speak so that there was no unneces¬ 
sary laceration. He said, as they turned 
homeward: 

“I want you to know, Miss Marlowe, how I 
appreciate all you’ve been to us—Boblee and 
me. Your coming with me this afternoon, too 
—I suppose it will sound exaggerated, fan- 


BOBLEE 


169 


tastic, but there’s no one else I could have 
wished to be with—to-day.” 

Spoken, the words seemed to himself a con¬ 
fession of the emptiness of his marriage, of his 
personal life; but she gave no sign of any such 
interpretation. Instead she said comfortably: 

“That’s because you’re letting Boblee be¬ 
long to me a little bit. I think she really does, 
too.” 

Over a hotel telephone they learned that the 
girl was still sleeping naturally. Then they 
drove to the little restaurant where Diana 
sometimes ate her dinner. That last lap of 
their drive was a vivid pleasure to Brent, 
which he wanted to prolong. Why not ask her 
to dine with him and talk over Pat’s devotion 
to Boblee, which was rather on his mind? And 
then he felt a depressing reaction. Surely his 
life was complicated enough already, without 
involving this girl with the brave mouth and 
understanding eyes. He had no right to pre¬ 
sume upon the accident of her affection for 
Boblee. But his handshake emphasized his 
words: 

“Good-by, Miss Marlowe. And thank you 
again. It’s been the happiest hour I’ve known 
in a long time.” 

He saw that the lines of fatigue about her 
eyes and mouth had faded; she looked younger, 
and there was a little color in her cheeks. 

“I’ve been happy, too. It’s generous—the 


170 


FULFILLMENT 


way you share Boblee with a stranger. Most 
parents would be more possessive, less in¬ 
clusive. . . .” 

“You are the generous one,” said Brent, 
“and of course I’m only an uncle.” 

She laughed at that, and then for an instant 
they looked long at each other. He had a fleet¬ 
ing thought that a woman like Diana Marlowe 
might appeal to a man’s intelligence, rest his 
spirit, and fill his physical life too. ... If he 
had met her years ago, or if he were free. . . . 
Then the moment passed and he had seen her 
into the restaurant and was back in the taxicab. 
As he felt for his latch key and opened his own 
immaculate front door he still seemed to see a 
pair of wide-open gray eyes, and somehow the 
steadiness of their regard reminded him of Bob¬ 
lee. The two girls were alike in a sort of fear¬ 
less integrity of spirit. 

Then he was in the house, the door closed be¬ 
hind him, back with that patched makeshift, his 
everyday life. 

During dinner that evening he was con¬ 
scious of a change in Frances, of some 
subtle undercurrent that seemed to hint at 
thought processes and mental experiences 
about which he knew nothing. She was gen¬ 
uinely relieved to learn that Boblee was better: 
during those long weeks Frances Appleton had 
suffered pangs of something nearer remorse 


BOBLEE 


171 


than she had ever experienced before. Not 
that she had any real conception of the part she 
had played in Boblee’s life, of that hideous 
doubt which she had implanted, or of the ir¬ 
responsibility of Aline, making possible the 
experience which had resulted in the child’s ill¬ 
ness. Frances knew almost nothing about hu¬ 
man nature: she was far more interested in 
chintzes and period furniture. But she had 
achieved some slight realization of her injus¬ 
tice to Pat Congdon through an interview in 
which the boy had shown his cards with the 
utmost simplicity. He had come to inquire 
about Boblee one afternoon, and also to see 
Frances. Of course, he told her, she and Mr. 
Appleton must know that he loved Boblee, that 
he wanted above all things to marry her when 
she should be old enough for marriage and he 
well started in his profession. He spoke 
simply, with dignity; any woman with the rudi¬ 
ments of a heart must have been conscious of 
the spiritual quality and beauty of the young 
man’s feeling. At the moment the outcome for 
Boblee was utterly uncertain: she might re¬ 
cover, and she might die; even Frances, self- 
centered and unimaginative, became aware of 
depths of feeling beyond her capacity to sound. 

So she had made him stay to dinner; it was 
one of the many evenings when Brent was 
away, probably in that small silent apartment, 
patiently waiting for Boblee to turn the corner. 
At dinner Pat had spoken of Miss Marlowe: 


172 


FULFILLMENT 


she was “wonderful” and Boblee had been de¬ 
voted to her ever since she had entered her 
class last year. She had been so kind to him, 
too, so understanding, always ready to detail 
the latest bulletin of doctor and nurse. She 
was clever too. Pat had read some of her verse 
and liked it. . . . 


The next day Frances had gone to see Aline. 
And Aline, too, had talked of Diana Marlowe. 
That afternoon her old schoolmate had struck 
Frances as unusually quiet, almost spiritless, 
but when Aline spoke of Diana there was a 
flash of malice in her narrow eyes. 

“She ? s one of those big school-girlish women 
that stupid men put on a pedestal—her pose is 
naivete—incredible innocence, the sort of air 
that deceives men—at first, anyway. Of 
course Brent likes her.” She added care¬ 
lessly, “He would,” and Frances felt a throb 
of angry suspicion. Had Brent known Miss 
Marlowe before? Had he seen anything of her 
—this obscure English teacher of Boblee’s 
with her small apartment over shabby shops in 
which for weeks Brent had been almost living? 

So that evening, when Brent dined at home 
for the first time in days, Frances put on a 
lovely frock which melted into the copper and 
cream tints of the dining room, and asked ques¬ 
tions about Boblee which Brent answered 
cheerfully. She was certainly better, much 


B O B L E E 173 

stronger. Tomlin was hopeful and the nurse 
had an entirely different expression. 

“Then she can be moved in a few days,” 
Frances said; but Brent did not know about 
that. Boblee was weak; Tomlin might con¬ 
sider it dangerous to move her for some time 
to come. 

“But this Miss Marlowe—isn’t it rather 
hard, taking possession of her place this way?” 

Brent explained that they had found a room 
for her in the same house; of course the situa¬ 
tion was difficult, but Miss Marlowe cared so 
much for Boblee that she had acted as any de¬ 
voted sister or aunt might have done. Of 
course he was seeing to it that she did not lose 
out financially; Tomlin had attended to that. 
He already knew Miss Marlowe and it hap¬ 
pened that another tenant in the same apart¬ 
ment house was a patient of Tomlin’s. So 
matters had been arranged satisfactorily. 

They were in the drawing room before the 
fire, with their coffee upon a little table between 
them, and the maid was gone. Brent was 
amazed at his wife’s tone when she spoke 
again. 

“You and Boblee seem bent upon making a 
heroine of her, this English teacher, with her 
hypnotic hold upon the child. But I do wish 
you’d realize what a fool you’re making of 
yourself, Brent.” 

Brent was so. astonished that he almost 
dropped his coffee cup. Having emptied it and 


174 


FULFILLMENT 


placed it safely upon the mahogany tray, he 
said sharply: 

“I wish you’d tell me what you’re driving at, 
Frances. I don’t understand.” 

She looked, not at him, but about the room, 
at the soft colors she loved, and at the fine old 
Chippendale table and chair recently acquired. 
To her the house always seemed her own pri¬ 
vate possession, which she voluntarily shared 
with Brent and the child. The thought that 
some day another woman might possess it 
made her cold. Moving to the hearth she stood 
with her back to the fire looking down at her 
husband. 

“Brent, I’m not quite so dull as I seem. Of 
course when you talked about divorce the other 
day I knew why—knew that there must be some 
woman you—wanted—some woman more at¬ 
tractive to you than your wife. But I didn’t 
know how far it had gone—or who the woman 
was—then. ’ ’ 

Brent had a feeling of being caught in a fog 
that was dense, stifling. What under heaven 
had Boblee’s Miss Marlowe to do with them? 
For an instant, remembering his entanglement 
with Aline which Frances might have suspected 
months ago, he was blind to the meaning be¬ 
hind her words. Then the fog cleared. . . . 

“My God! To insinuate such a thing—after 
all she’s done for the child! Frances, are you 
crazy?” 

She flushed deeply: never in their years to- 


BOBLEE 


175 


gether had Brent spoken to her in such a tone. 
Yet instinct told her that if she had blundered 
it was a blunder that flayed him as lashes of a 
whip would have done. She knew him too well 
to believe that his amazement was assumed; 
this teacher of Boblee’s was not guilty in the 
literal sense. Yet his very anger convinced 
her that suspicion was not wholly without foun¬ 
dation and she had almost a feeling of triumph 
at having pierced the joints of his armor; for 
months she had known that her power, either 
to hurt or to interest her husband, was waning. 
Now she had startled him, even enraged him. 

Frances was one of those people who take a 
pride in the fact that they rarely apologize. 
She might know herself to be in the wrong, but 
her theory was that the mistake you do not' 
confess is less of a blunder than if you acknowl¬ 
edge it. So she said, calmly: 

“Please don’t speak to me in that tone, 
Brent. And of course, if this Miss Marlowe is 
the superior person you consider her, she 
wouldn’t marry a divorced man anyhow. You 
did say something to me about a divorce, didn’t 
you? I haven’t dreamed it in the confusion of 
these weeks of Roberta’s illness?” 

“No, you didn’t dream it.” # 

He realized that there was nothing to gain 
from harping upon her blunder: she would 
never repeat it. But he had a longing for 
action, for freedom from a bond that had begun 
to gall and hurt. He determined to take the 


176 


FULFILLMENT 


definite irrevocable step which should affect 
her as nothing else might do. He lit a cigar, 
as she sat down in her chair, staring at the 
fire, and presently he was speaking in a voice 
as detached and cool as her own: 

“It’s only fair that you should know the 
truth. As it happens the insinuations you’ve 
made are preposterous. I have barely known 
Miss Marlowe a month; we are not even 
friends, although the accident of her being Bob- 
lee ’s teacher has thrown us together. And yet, 
now that you’ve opened the subject, there are 
things you and I had better talk out. ’ ’ 

Frances never smoked: to her the modem 
cigarette habit for women was an unfeminine 
and disgusting weakness, but at that moment 
she wished that she had a cigarette between 
her fingers. She was not an especially intui¬ 
tive person, yet she realized that after this talk 
their lives would probably be altered, and she 
dreaded change with the dread of the unimagi¬ 
native, to whom the rut of habit is sacred. 

But this altered, undemanding Brent went 
on dispassionately: 

“I want you to know that there are things 
about you which I have always recognized and 
appreciated. You’ve managed money wonder¬ 
fully—as many women never learn to do. 
You’ve made us comfortable, Boblee and me; 
you’ve created beauty about you and you have 
been beautiful yourself—always. Critical, fas- 


BOBLEE 


177 


tidious men have envied me these fifteen years. 
But of course you should never have married 
me; perhaps you should never have married 
any one—though that’s guesswork, after all, 
for some other man might have won what I 
have never been able to wake in you. ’ ’ 

He waited and she said, reluctantly: 

“It’s the same old thing. I think you make 
too much of—sex.” 

Brent smiled, realizing that for her this was 
a difficult and rather vulgar speech. 

“You may be right there. But haven’t you 
noticed how the thing we’ve missed often looms 
bigger than the same thing when it is ours as a 
matter of course? However, we’ll allow that 
I’m queer and that you are normal. The point 
is that at last I’ve committed what to you must 
seem the unpardonable sin. I’ve been unfaith¬ 
ful to you—for months. Which is why you had 
better divorce me.” 

Spoken, the words seemed horrible, even to 
himself. Then he saw that familiar look on her 
face—a sort of frozen disgust. 

“You mean that, if I divorce you, then you’ll 
marry this particular woman, instead of 
just—” 

Brent saw in her eyes that old look he re¬ 
membered, an expression of repulsion. For 
the first time in his life he did not care at all. 
She seemed to him pitifully small and dull, lack¬ 
ing not only the capacity for real emotion but 


178 


FULFILLMENT 


also any sort of moral enthusiasm, any large 
understanding or power for generous giving. 
He said, without directly replying: 

“I mean that divorce would be better for us 
both. And as to money—you shall have half 
my income, paid as you prefer.” 

She was crying, and he had not seen her cry 
in years. For the moment her beauty was 
eclipsed, her face contorted, and Brent’s in¬ 
stant pity was startling, tender, like his feeling 
for her long ago. Then she was on her feet, 
moving toward the door. She said in a toneless 
voice: 

“Of course, Brent, Ill do what youVe meant 
me to do—go away—leave you free—leave this 
house—” 

Her voice broke and then Brent thought he 
understood. The house—she had made its 
beauty, she really loved it; it was the house she 
hated giving up, not their life together. He 
could have laughed aloud. Oh, she was wel¬ 
come to the house! But she stood in the door¬ 
way, her head up, her features no longer 
twitching, her beauty restored, resplendent. 
And how it had moved him—once! But she 
was saying in the low toneless voice he remem¬ 
bered as expressive of sullen anger: 

“Ill go away—but I don’t see why I should 
go through the ugliness and publicity of a di¬ 
vorce. I don’t see that you—need one!” 

The door closed sharply after her, and Brent 
stared at the place where she had been. She 


BOBLEE 


179 


meant to punish him, that was plain. It was 
the sort of revenge possible for a narrow tena¬ 
cious temperament. But Aline—what would 
Aline do or say? He knew she believed that 
eventually divorce would make their marriage 
possible: this attitude of Frances’ altered the 
whole situation. And yet, sitting by the blaze 
which leaped high as he piled on fresh wood, 
he was conscious of an amazing illogical relief! 

To have Boblee to himself, to be free to come 
and go, to make what friends he chose, and yet 
not to be in the position where marriage to 
Aline would be possible. . . . He was ashamed 
of this feeling of a burden lifted, this sense of 
freshness and hope which flooded his whole 
being. 


V 

A week later Pat stood in the doorway of 
Diana’s sitting room, looking at her with 
hurt, bewildered eyes. He had been tpld 
for the fifth time—only, hitherto he had 
dealt with the nurse—that he could not see 
Boblee, that the Doctor felt she was not yet 
strong enough. But Pat knew that Mr. Ap¬ 
pleton saw Boblee every afternoon, that she 
had seen Frances Appleton but yesterday. 

“What have I done? What’s happened to 
Boblee ? ” he demanded in a voice that gave Di¬ 
ana a feeling almost of nausea, as though she 
were torturing some defenseless animal. Yet 
Boblee had told the Doctor, and Diana herself, 
that she did not want to see Pat, that she would 
be ill again if he came into the room. 

Diana had just come in from school: she still 
wore hat and cloak, and she said softly, so that 
Boblee would not hear: 

‘ ‘ Come out with me, Pat. I have some shop¬ 
ping to do and we can talk better away from 
here. I’ll tell you all I know.” 

Through the dim hall and down the stair they 
went, the long stair up which Diana and the 
taxi-driver had dragged Boblee that wild 
March day. Now it was April; in the busy 
180 


BOBLEE 


181 


cross street, filled with shops, there was an in¬ 
describable smell of Spring, wafted from the 
parks and squares. Across the way one could 
see a film of green pricking up above the brown 
earth in Madison Square, while the fountain 
rose and fell as though blown by a vagrant 
wind. 

“Shall we go in and sit down a moment?” 
Diana asked. “It’s warm in the sunshine.” 

Pat followed her mechanically. In the weeks 
of Boblee’s illness his pleasant youthful lank¬ 
ness had become an almost painful thinness. 
Diana wished that she could pet him as one pets 
a forlorn child, but there was something un¬ 
childlike and grim about his set mouth and his 
steady eyes. 

“Miss Marlowe, something’s happened to 
Boblee besides pneumonia. She’s changed. 
You know we saw each other all the time; she 
knew I cared for her, she cared for me. And 
now her not wanting to see me—it’s queer. 
There’s something wrong, horribly wrong!” 

Diana put her hand on his sleeve. 

“My dear, I know! Boblee is different. 
It’s not just you—something did happen that 
day, before she went out into the storm. Or 
the evening before—something that frightened 
her. ’ ’ 

She told him of Boblee’s questions that af¬ 
ternoon, before the Doctor arrived—were 
things always a woman’s fault—were all men 
“tarred with the same brush”? And then 


182 


FULFILLMENT 


later there had been phrases in the girl’s delir¬ 
ium which had puzzled them all: something 
about a silver arrow—Diana had found such an 
arrow in Boblee’s handbag, a hair ornament 
with the edge of a dagger. When she had fin¬ 
ished Pat said quietly: 

“What do you make out of it all, Miss Mar¬ 
lowe? Do you know where Boblee went, that 
evening before she came to you?” 

“Yes, she went out with Mrs. Armstrong and 
several of her friends; I don’t know who they 
were. That much Mrs. Appleton let fall when 
she came here to see Boblee the other day. 
But Dr. Tomlin insists that none of us are to 
question Boblee—that she’s too sore and ex¬ 
hausted for the smallest extra irritation—that 
our whole duty is to get her well.” 

The young man paled perceptibly. 

“He may be right—I don’t know. But I’m 
sure of just one thing, that some brute has 
shown her what skunks men can be! And she 
was such a clean plucky kid that she wouldn’t 
be upset or frightened easily. If I could 
only—” 

He broke off and Diana’s hand slid from his 
arm and took his taut fingers in a firm grasp. 

“Listen Pat. I think you’re right. I’ve 
thought it must be something like that ever 
since she crept into my arms that day. But 
we can’t do anything until she’s stronger. Mr. 
Appleton has asked me to go away with her 
this summer, when my classes are over. It’s 


BOBLEE 


183 


Dr. Tomlin’s plan to liave her up at his camp 
during July and August. And when she and I 
are outdoors, free and alone, I will learn how to 
help her most. And then, Pat, she’ll want you 
again—some day we’ll be sending for you.” 

Pat drew a long breath. Presently his hand 
closed gratefully upon the firm hand near him, 
and he said in a different tone: 

“All right—and thank you! I guess you 
have the right dope—that .you are the one who 
can count most—now. And you have helped 
me, the Lord knows! But what do you think 
my line ought to be—with her f ’ ’ 

“Go on saying it with flowers while she’s in 
town. Later on you can write—rather peace¬ 
fully and impersonally I should say. Bemem- 
ber, Pat, she’s had a bad time, and we shall 
have to be patient until' she gets her balance 
back. She’ll do it in the end—Boblee is made 
of strong stuff.” 

The color came suddenly to his hard lean 
cheeks and his eyes burned, so that he looked 
young again, as full of vigorous life as Boblee 
herself at her radiant best. 

“She is that! Nobody knows it better than 
I. I’ve met a lot of nice girls, pretty and good 
too, but Boblee’s the cream off the top—none of 
them can touch her! And when I thought she 
was dying ...” 

He broke off, and Diana rose to her feet; 

“Don’t hark back to that. She’s safe now, 
thank God. But it’s not only you and I, Pat— 


184 


FULFILLMENT 


these weeks have been like an endless night¬ 
mare to Mr. Appleton. He’s worn to a 
thread.’ ’ 

Pat nodded soberly. “I know. And he’s a 
corker. Boblee’s crazy about him. But still 
it isn’t as if he were her father. He’s only 
an Un—” 

Diana put up her hand. “Don’t say it! 
Uncles may care horribly—and they’re just as 
human and lonesome as the rest of us. He has 
no children of his own, remember. And then 
he might say that you are only a boy! ’ ’ 

“Yes, he might,” said the youth, a glint of 
humor and of mature understanding in his 
quick glance. “I guess I have been damnably 
self-centered! And then—well, Mrs. Apple- 
ton’s certainly a beauty, but—” 

He stopped, and Diana’s eloquent eyebrows 
tilted. 

“What I’ve heard doesn’t endear her to me, 
Pat. Still, so often people are in the wrong 
environment, misfits temperamentally.” 

Pat spoke judicially. 

“I don’t believe it’s that. And I think in 
her way she means to be kind. She’s been 
broken up about Boblee, too. But it’s like this: 
everywhere you go, nowadays, you see women 
banting. Keeping thin is their religion. Mrs. 
Appleton’s never had to bant. Her figure’s 
enough to make any eighteen-year-old green 
with envy. But the trouble is she’s been bant¬ 
ing her soul—keeping clear of anything that’ll 


BOBLEE 


185 


bother her, or make her feel—sort of eating 
spiritual pickles so she won’t grow any bigger 
—you get what I mean! Result is she’s thin¬ 
ner than her own body, a darn sight thinner 
than the leanest flapper on Broadway! ’ ’ 


As April bloomed that year Boblee gradually 
grew pink again, her dark eyes ceased to seem 
enormous in her oval face, her cheeks lost their 
pathetic unchildlike hollows. 

To the Doctor and to Diana it was soon ob¬ 
vious that the child dreaded sitting up or going 
out, in short that she feared being well enough 
to go home. Tomlin spoke about it to Diana 
when she came to see him about a return of her 
insomnia. She was far stronger and happier 
than she had been: the dream had not recurred. 
Yet the strain during the long weeks of anxiety 
had told. She had pocketed his prescription 
and risen to go when Peter said complainingly: 

“Come, now, Miss Diana, give me a little 
more of your valuable time—now that I’ve 
been useful. I want to talk to you about 
Boblee.” 

Diana promptly sat down on the arm of the 
chair she had just relinquished and began to 
pull off the gloves she had just put on. Diana 
never could think in gloves. 

“My time! I like that. When I’ve been re¬ 
ligiously trying not to resemble those idle 
women who hang around doctors’ offices and 


186 


FULFILLMENT 


make nuisances of themselves! Haven’t I 
heard you talk—not just you, but physicians 
generally—about the female of the species? I 
tell you I come from a family of doctors— 
know all their pet aversions.” 

Tomlin grinned, took up a cigar, cut the end 
with exquisite care, and finally lit it, almost re¬ 
luctantly. In his square chair, sitting in front 
of his square desk, with his brown, strong, 
square face, and the bulldog look Diana liked, 
he seemed to her one of the most trustworthy 
and lovable men she had ever known. 

He said at length, between appreciative puffs 
of a fragrant cigar: 

‘ 4 You ’re not making a nuisance of yourself: 
you couldn’t, in this office. But about Boblee: 
she’s making progress, and still I’m not satis¬ 
fied about her mental attitude. She worships 
Brent—and still hates the notion of going back 
to West Eleventh Street—I take it because 
Mrs. Appleton is there.” 

He stopped, and Diana felt that his silence 
was impressive. She said finally: 

“I have only seen her once, and then her 
beauty took away my breath. Just having her 
to look at ought to make a fastidious man, like 
Mr. Appleton, happy!” 

Tomlin’s jaw took an ironic twist. 

“My dear young lady, if men’s happiness de¬ 
pended principally on women’s beauty there 
would be a shifting of values all over the world 
—and more happiness.” 


BOBLEE 


187 


“You mean there are more beautiful women 
than there are good wives? I should think it 
was the other way about.” 

“Possibly. If you insist upon superlatives. 
But there’s a type of wife who fails more com¬ 
pletely in social morality than the woman of 
the streets.” 

His patient looked startled and Tomlin’s 
face relaxed. He chuckled, and his eyes wan¬ 
dered from Miss Marlowe’s fine head, with its 
crisp dark hair, to her figure, long-limbed, still 
spare, and yet peculiarly gracious. Her name 
suited her: he would have agreed with Boblee 
about that. Yet there was that about her 
broad-shouldered, deep-breasted figure—a sug¬ 
gestion of rare vitality—that made him think 
of another goddess, Demeter, mother of earth 
and of all fruitfulness. Fortunately he made 
no mythological comparisons to the subject of 
his soliloquy. Instead he said severely: 

“Young woman, don’t suppose for an instant 
that I’m belittling the importance of good looks 
in a woman. The man who does that is sub¬ 
normal—or dull as ditchwater. But beauty 
can never take the place of sympathy. Which 
brings us again to Boblee. Since she came to 
stay with you she’s found how comfortable hu¬ 
man warmth is and doesn’t want to go home 
again to her freezing Aunt. ’ ’ 

“Heaven knows I’d like to keep her. She 
warms me, too. I didn’t know how lonely I 
was, before she came.” 


188 


FULFILLMENT 


Tomlin’s eyebrows lifted. “I thought you 
were one of those independent female authors 
who prefer to live alone. Didn’t I hear some 
buncombe about solitude being necessary to 
your work? That you couldn’t produce your 
masterpieces and rub elbows with common 
folk?” 

The corners of her mouth lifted. 

“Well, I lived once in a Baltimore boarding 
house where the other boarders seemed to have 
nothing to do but visit each other’s rooms and 
gossip, so to get my own work done I retired to 
my attic evenings and locked the door, and they 
called me the hermit crab! But I never had 
had a chance at a Boblee, then. Now I should 
like less work and more Boblee.” 

“I should, myself,” said Peter. “Well, 
what I want for her is to go straight from your 
place to my sister, Page Ellery, in Vermont. 
Her husband’s a country doctor, a very able 
man. He and I own a camp half way up a 
mountain and about four miles from their vil¬ 
lage. For the next two months Boblee could 
stay with Page and Jim, who would enjoy hav¬ 
ing her—their own two girls are married and 
gone. Then, when your school closes you can 
join her. Later on Brent and I may be able 
to run up for a week or two, and we can all 
stay at the camp.” 

Diana’s eyes glowed. “I should love it. 
I’ve never had enough camping, and by May 


B 0 B L E E 189 

Pm mad to be outdoors. But school doesn’t 
close until June.” 

“All right. Arrange to go then. Brent 
can drive Boblee up next week, and my sister 
will look after her. The girl will go happily if 
you promise to follow when you can—and when 
she’s had weeks of rest and good air Pm hop¬ 
ing she may talk out to you whatever is on her 
mind. But I don’t want her worried now by 
questions. Mental upsets have to be handled 
slowly and carefully—and Jim and Page will 
know how to look after her and still leave her 
alone.” 

At parting Diana said: “Boblee is lucky in 
her physician. She’s in the state when tact¬ 
less handling might twist her for life.” 

He nodded. “But I’ll have to make a con¬ 
fession: this camp plan is two for Peter Tomlin 
and one for Boblee. You see, I want you both 
in the place where I go year after year—which 
happens to be one of the loveliest spots on 
earth. ’ ’ 

Her color deepened. “Boblee and I feel 
honored, Doctor.” 

“It’s a bargain, then. Shake on it! And 
good luck to your work. May you land the 
most highbrow editor of them all!” 

In the elevator Diana’s hand still felt numb 
from the pressure of the doctor’s firm clasp, 
yet the expression in his hazel eyes had puzzled 
her—those curiously alert and shining eyes in 


190 


FULFILLMENT 


the dark, rather heavy face. She wondered 
just what that look meant, whether she were 
imagining things. . . . Then, shaking her dark 
head and broad shoulders much as a dog 
shakes water from his long hair, she stepped 
happily out into the sunlight with her long 
swift stride. 


VI 


Two weeks later Brent drove Boblee up 
to Vermont in his car, and the flying journey 
through the delicate northern spring at its 
loveliest was a delight to them both. There 
had been difficulties about getting off; Brent’s 
office had been overworked for weeks and 
probably nothing but Boblee’s need of him 
could have torn him away at this time. As 
it was, he damned the legal profession and 
informed his partners that he was leaving for a 
week if the whole office went to pot in con¬ 
sequence. Frost, usually imperturbable, was 
worried about an obnoxious Bapid Transit 
hearing before a difficult and unsympathetic 
judge, but after a look at Brent’s worn face he 
said in his precise voice: 

“Of course you must go, Appleton. We’ll 
have to worry along, somehow. And I under¬ 
stand your wanting to get your niece in the 
right place, with the right people. You have 
been through terrible anxiety.” 

Brent looked at the older man gratefully. 
“I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but you see—” 

The Senior Partner waited, looking expectant 
and interested. Brent went on, rather 
haltingly: 


191 


192 


FULFILLMENT 


“You see, sir, when we thought Boblee was 
dying I was like a wrecked ship—engine and 
rudder both gone. Now that she’s getting well 
I’m a man again instead of a mass of rotten 
pulp. She’s given me back self confidence—to 
put it brutally—guts! And so my one object 
is to get her fit again—and happy.’ 9 

That same Saturday they started, Brent driv¬ 
ing, Boblee in the seat beside him, gliding along 
beside the Hudson, their eyes on the sparkling 
water, the delicate budding foliage, the sky, 
half hidden by opalescent clouds like broken 
bits of mother of pearl. The wind against 
their faces fanned a tinge of color into the 
girl’s cheeks: her big dark eyes were full of 
light, her lips curved into a dreaming smile. 
She looked to-day more like her old self, though 
the tall figure was still too slight, and the head 
under the cropped hair drooped a little, as it 
had never drooped before. Brent said, after 
a long run, as they slowed up nearing one of the 
river towns: 

“Boblee, don’t you think you were rather 
nasty to Pat? Not even to see him to say good- 
by? I call it rough on the poor devil.” 

Brent managed to watch her profile, in spite 
of some heavy, badly regulated traffic. He 
was troubled to see the blush that wavered 
across her face, and then faded. The car 
swerved about a great truck, then up a hill. 
When truck and town and hill were all behind 


BOBLEE 


193 


them she said, in the new mature voice that 
worried him: 

* 4 Brent darling, please don’t let’s talk about 
Pat—or anything back home. I’m so glad to 
be off with you, alone. I’ve been tired of 
everybody, except Diana and you.” 

Brent drove on, without speaking. He had 
had an interview with Pat a day or two before, 
and the boy had squarely stated his case: that 
he loved Boblee, wanted to marry her and be¬ 
lieved she cared for him. “That is, until this 
pneumonia business, Mr. Appleton; it’s changed 
her, queered me with her, the Lord knows why!” 

Brent had told him rather curtly that Bob¬ 
lee was a baby and that he hoped she wasn’t 
in love with Pat or any one else yet. But now, 
beside his girl, with the sharp fresh odors of 
spring in their nostrils, Brent felt sorry for 
the upstanding youngster whose eyes had met 
his own so firmly. This thin, quiet Boblee was 
a lovely thing: no wonder her refusal to see 
Pat had puzzled and hurt the direct, unequiv¬ 
ocal youth. Yet at this crisis of her life Bob¬ 
lee must have her own way, and if an invalid 
whim meant suffering for somebody it couldn’t 
be helped: the boy would have to fight 
through. . . . 

Brent’s mind reverted to his own problems, 
to Frances and Aline, and to his own next 
move in the complex game. Of late Frances 
had been immersed in her work; they had not 


194 


FULFILLMENT 


spoken again of the future, but he had no 
reason to feel that she had changed her mind 
concerning the matter of a divorce. His 
vaguely defined plan was to accomplish a 
gradual break. They would both be away 
during the summer, possibly Frances might go 
abroad. In the autumn he might take a small 
apartment for himself and Boblee, leaving 
Frances the house, since that seemed to be 
what she most desired. Their living under the 
same roof seemed more and more of a farce, 
and he knew that Boblee would be happier in 
a place all their own, where she could keep 
house for him, assisted by a couple of maids. 

But Aline—she was the real crux of the 
situation! Brent had seen her of late inter¬ 
mittently and hurriedly. He had told her of 
Frances ’ attitude about the divorce, but Aline 
had not been as troubled as he had expected. 

“Shell come around later,’’ the young 
widow had placidly assumed. ‘ ‘ Frances is too 
conventional to accept such an idea at once. 
But when you’ve left her, Brent, when you’re 
no longer under the same roof, she’ll realize 
that a complete break will be better than a 
mere separation, better for her—for one thing, 
more dignified.” 

He did not feel that Aline, or any one, could 
possibly foresee Frances’ course of action, but 
to-day he put behind him all the complexities 
linked with those two women in New York, and 
concentrated upon getting from the Green 


BOBLEE 


195 


Dragon Fly—as Boblee had named the car— 
and from Boblee herself, their very best in re¬ 
spect to speed and gaiety—with due consider¬ 
ation for traffic cops and convalescence. 

Boblee liked the clean trim hotel in Hartford 
where they spent the night, liked the novelty 
of signing the register for herself and Brent, 
as he insisted upon her doing. 

‘ 4 Roberta Lee Appleton and TJncle, ,, he dic¬ 
tated, and thus it appeared on the sedate page, 
to the hotel clerk’s mystification later. After 
dinner they drove about the pretty little city, 
circled its innumerable outlying parks and its 
gleaming water-courses, and at ten o’clock Bob¬ 
lee got into bed, physically tired, but able to 
sleep the night straight through, for the first 
time since her illness. 

They drove all the next day, and made their 
destination in the late spring dusk; Dr. Tom¬ 
lin’s southern sister, Page Ellery, and her hus¬ 
band, “Dr. Jim,” met them in front of a whim¬ 
sical old house of gray stone, set back from the 
elm-shaded village street in a grove of maple 
and pine. Beyond, the mountains were mys¬ 
terious and beautiful in the lovely spring 
twilight. 

The Ellerys were a gray pair, like their 
house, and they had grown to look alike, as 
elderly husbands and wives so often do—Dr. 
Jim lean, stoop shouldered, of middle height, 
with a look of having been battered by wind 
and weather, his gray-blue eyes gleaming from 


196 


FULFILLMENT 


beneath heavy grizzled brows, and one black 
lock of hair contrasting with a thick thatch 
that was almost white. Mrs. Ellery was al¬ 
most as tall as her husband; she had much the 
same weatherbeaten look, but her cheeks were 
pale pink, her eyes were hazel like Peter’s. 
There was something unconquerably young 
about her—as though the years had touched her 
carefully, leaving her the smile and the quick 
step of her girlhood. 

She put both arms about Boblee and gave a 
little laugh of sheer pleasure. 

“My dear, Peter has made me eager to know 
you. I’m so glad you could come. But he for¬ 
got to tell me how tall you’ve grown—and how 
pretty! Also how young-lady-ish. We’ll have 
to put you in knickerbockers, and find you a 
horse to ride. Then maybe you won’t remind 
me so of Fifth Avenue and the dances I used 
to go to at Sherry’s, when I left Virginia long 
ago for a visit to Fairyland—though even then 
some people called it Babylon.” 

Boblee’s color deepened and her eyes danced. 

“Knickerbockers and a horse—how I’d love 
it!” she cried. The two men smiled at her— 
Dr. Ellery thought he could find the horse, and 
Brent watched his convalescent with a mixture 
of emotions: satisfaction that she was obviously 
going to like the place and the people, and a 
dread of the loneliness, to-morrow, or the next 
day, when he should be going home without her. 

They had one talk before he went, in Bob- 


BOBLEE 


197 


lee’s quaint room looking out upon sunset 
hills, Brent in a comfortable old rocker, Boblee 
at his feet on a stool that reminded her of a 
squat water spaniel she had once known—she 
called the stool “Toodles.” One of the win¬ 
dows extended to the floor and opened out upon 
a little porch, and they could see the budding 
foliage of the trees in the garden and, beyond 
them, purple hills and a bronze glory of 
sunset. 

“Brent, it’s a marvelous place,” said Bob¬ 
lee. “I don’t see how even camp can be better, 
though the Doctor says it is. Diana will like 
it all as much as we do. Please tell her to come 
as soon as she possibly can!” 

Brent agreed, happy in the child’s recovered 
eagerness. When he turned from the dazzling 
sky, to the long thin figure close to his knees, 
she was looking up at him. She said shyly: 

“I want to ask you something, Brent. When 
I was sick, did I just dream that something 
queer happened—or was it really so ?” 

“What, Boblee?” Brent asked, touching the 
little curls at the nape of her neck. 

“When I was so ill, pretty nearly gone, did 
you say things—about needing me, wanting me 
to live for your sake, because you couldn’t get 
along without me? Or did I just imagine it, 
as I did such a lot of silly things ? ’ ’ 

Since her recovery Brent had thought of that 
irrational proceeding of his with masculine dis¬ 
taste: he was ashamed of it, as of a touch of 


198 


FULFILLMENT 


melodrama, even of hysteria. But he confessed 
rather reluctantly that she hadn’t dreamed it. 
The thing had happened. 

Boblee’s eyes were full of light, her lips 
curved, wistfully. But as she looked at Brent’s 
wooden expression and heightened color she 
began to laugh. 

“Diana’s right, absolutely right.” 

“What has she to do with it?” 

“Oh, she says that all grown men are afraid 
of being sentimental, that they hate emotion, 
are afraid of the word love.” 

He laughed, too, then leaned down until his 
cheek touched hers. 

“I don’t mind owning that I was an awful 
idiot, honey. I had been through a beastly ex¬ 
perience which I hate even to remember.” 

She nodded soberly. “I know, you poor 
dear. But I think maybe you’d like to know— 
this. You see, when I was so ill, right on the 
edge of the funny shadowy woods that seemed 
crowding down on top of me, just beyond the 
bed, I kept remembering your head against my 
arm, and the things you said, over and over: 
‘I can’t get along without you—you must fight, 
Boblee.’ Honest, Brent, it helped me to hang 
on! I sort of felt if I let go, and just let the 
woods swallow me up, it would be mean—as if 
somehow I’d be letting you down. ... So I 
tried to keep the woods away. . . . Do you see, 
you.funny old Uncle?” 

Brent saw, and kissed her, with a ridiculous, 


BOBLEE 


199 


feminine lump in his throat. But Boblee re¬ 
turned to the scenery, eschewing further 
sentiment: 

“There, Brent, it’s down, the sun—right on 
the rim of the world—over the edge! And the 
sky’s like a garden of hollyhocks! Oh, look!” 


He got home on a day in late April, a day of 
sudden heat. The city seemed airless, crowded 
and ugly; driving in the cab from the station 
he felt bleakly homeless. Never before in his 
life had he been conscious of just such a wave 
of nostalgia. At the house he found Frances 
away, only the pleasant welcoming housemaid 
—that Josie who had philosophized to Boblee 
—and, to his masculine eyes, a clean, well or¬ 
dered house. In his own room he even noticed 
fresh window curtains, flowers on his dresser, 
and the maid, who had come up with him to 
carry one of his bags, seemed to be awaiting 
his approbation. So he said: 

“ Thanks, Josie. And for the flowers too. 
They’re very pretty. And aren’t the window 
curtains new!” 

Josie beamed, said that they were, and lin¬ 
gered an instant to add: 

“I’m sorry Mrs. Appleton’s away, sir. But 
she’s at Mrs. Winter’s residence, in Morris¬ 
town, and she left her telephone number. I 
think she’s doing over their drawing room, Mr. 
Appleton, and that she’ll be home to-morrow.” 


200 


FULFILLMENT 


Brent thanked her again and she disap¬ 
peared, closing the door behind her. Then the 
telephone next to his bed rang, and he answered 
it. Aline was on the wire. 

“Oh, Brent, I thought yon might have gotten 
in! Dear, come over for dinner. I’m having 
it at home to-night, alone. Do come, Brent.” 

He hesitated, told himself that it might as 
well be to-night as any time, and agreed to go, 
to be there in half an hour. Swiftly he tubbed, 
got into his clothes, found his dinner coat, and 
summoned a taxi. 

It was after dinner—the small perfect meal 
cooked by Aline’s one maid—that he perceived 
again the provocative charm he had almost for¬ 
gotten. Aline wore white, with a necklace the 
color of her ruddy hair about her slim round 
throat, and sheer, loose sleeves parting in unex¬ 
pected places, showing her lovely slender arms. 
The dinner things out of the way, and the maid 
gone, she went to Brent, and sitting down on 
the arm of his chair, began smoothing his hair. 

“Poor old boy! You’re tired, I know—and 
town seems close after those wonderful hills. 
But—ah-h Brent, I Ve missed you so! ’ ’ 

She was on his knees now, and Brent was 
holding her with one arm, looking down at her 
slim pointed face, her red lips, the ruddy gold 
of her hair. The faint perfume he remembered 
came in little whiffs of fragrance; he felt the 
pressure of her slim body against him, saw 


BOBLEE 


201 


the lovely curve of her ankle, the delicate little 
line between her breasts, all the imperative 
charm of her, heightened by the suggestion of 
intrigue and mystery which she seemed able 
to assume or doff at pleasure. He kissed the 
fragrant hair, then her lips. She clung to him. 

“Brent, Brent, I have missed you so! It’s 
been as though there were no one else in town, 
no one.” 

Brent felt again that fascination she had had 
for him at the beginning, and he was still more 
conscious of the sheer delight of being loved. 
He wanted to drift—to forget irritating scru¬ 
ples—and then, like a tiny silver bell within 
his own brain, he seemed to hear the words 
Boblee had spoken: 

“If I let go, just let the woods swallow me 
up, I felt as if it would be mean—as if somehow 
I’d let you down. ...” 

The silver bell stopped ringing and Aline’s 
voice came, slow, deliberate, like water falling 
drop by drop: 

“Don’t—you—want me—Brent, dear old 
Brent—” 

“As if somehow I’d let you down. . . .” 
Brent told himself that he was utterly ridicu¬ 
lous; that sane, sophisticated men didn’t make 
asses of themselves by remembering little girls 
at a moment like this. . . . And then he found 
himself free, on his feet, walking up and down 
the room. 


202 


FULFILLMENT 


“Aline, I can’t let yon—it isn’t fair. When 
it seemed possible that I might be free, that we 
might marry, then it wasn’t—tawdry! But 
now—” 

He broke off. Aline had dropped into her 
own low chair. She was very quiet, but so 
tense that he remembered a slim little cat he 
had once seen, with golden eyes, poised motion¬ 
less, before springing upon a bird hopping 
gaily along a garden path. Then he heard the 
woman say in a tone of suppressed rage: 

‘‘Tawdry—tawdry—for Heaven’s sake why? 
You weren’t thinking of marrying me, that first 
time! It was not until later, months later, that 
we talked of marriage. ... It’s not Frances 
who has changed you.” 

He knew that he was afraid she might say 
things that would make him hate her, but she 
stopped abruptly; he could see the pulse in her 
temple throbbing, could hear the tap-tap of her 
slipper on the rug. He began to speak, swiftly 
and eagerly: 

“ Aline, look here: I can’t force Frances 9 
hand, but I believe that you’re right, that in 
time she ’ll see the advantage of freedom for us 
both. She is conventional, and to be married 
and yet not married, living alone, yet tied—she 
won’t like it. So in time I shall be free. And 
then—don’t you see, dear, that if we don’t feel 
self-conscious—if we aren’t sneaking around, 
now, being together later may mean the real 
thing—happiness. ...” 


B O B L E E 203 

Aline looked at him strangely. “You didn’t 
think all this out, before.” 

“No,” said Brent, and he felt suddenly calm, 
sure of himself, sure that the inhibition which, 
had gripped him was strong enough to be 
trusted. “No, I thought only of myself, of 
what I’d missed during long years of empty 
living, of what I wanted. And I was a cad, 
Aline—I should have protected you—run from 
your very kindness. Instead—but that’s over. 
We’ve a chance to begin again. Let’s wipe the 
slate clean, start fresh. We’ll meet often, go 
about together now and then—and some day, 
perhaps, we can be married.” 

He paused, she did not speak, and he laughed. 

“Aline, it’s not easy! You’re like a flame 
and I’m tinder—driftwood. ...” 

She got up lazily, still watching him. 

“Driftwood makes a glorious fire, Brent!” 

He was conscious of feeling more futile than 
he had ever felt, as she stood there, smiling at 
him. The unspoken masculine tradition that a 
man may not refuse an invitation from a 
woman obsessed him and he saw his hesitant 
self as smug, a poseur, hypocritical. And then 
it was that Aline laughed aloud. 

“Brent” she said, “foolish Brent. ...” 

Something in his feeling for her snapped, 
changed utterly, as he caught her to him, held 
her until she struggled for breath. Life ceased 
to be a complex of puzzling anomalies, of ideas 
and of sensitive memories, warring with each 


204 


FULFILLMENT 


other, because of that insistent desire to play a 
straight game. Instead it became a swirl of 
emotions blotting out everything but the dom¬ 
inant moment. . . . 


PART THREE 


& 


DIANA 









I 


T HAT Spring the affairs of Foley, Frost 
and Appleton had never been in better 
shape. Higher courts sustained, judges 
approved, and success smiled, while other firms 
envied and now and then cautiously disparaged, 
sometimes the sincerest form of flattery. And 
Brent’s personal work went well; even the 
innumerable tiny pricks that goad and irri¬ 
tate the conscientious attorney now seemed 
negligible. 

Yet one morning, while he sat waiting for 
Conway in his office, he wearily surveyed that 
maze of conflicting interests and desires which 
made up his private life. Now that the idea 
of freedom from his marriage had been pre¬ 
sented, he found himself dwelling upon it. On 
the surface it suggested an opportunity for 
such happiness as he had never known—a real 
wife, children perhaps. To him, as to many, 
the rather repellent word “divorce” seemed 
to open a door, giving him a glimpse of bright 
seas and far horizons. . . . And then came that 
swift reaction, that curious reluctance. For 
the woman whom he might marry was already 
on the scene, no dream woman, but a flesh and 
blood reality, the woman who might make his 

207 


208 


FULFILLMENT 


home and his future and explain his action to 
a curious if not, to-day, a censorious world. 

Even here in his office, scene of that hard, 
clean, and impersonal work which tends to put 
in right perspective most masculine follies, 
there came to him something keener and subtler 
than memory, a sort of intense realization of 
Aline, an all but tangible perception of her, 
vivid as a perfume, sharp as a recurrent note 
in music. 

The other night he had yielded to his own 
desire and her mood of surrender; since then 
he had taken the stand that until they could 
openly possess each other their past intimacy 
was not to recur. Yet this slowly developed 
and inhibiting barrier of honor could not con¬ 
ceal the fact that one facet of his nature still 
reflected the gleaming splendor they had known 
together. He did not want to marry Aline— 
of that he was certain. But he was conscious 
that he still wished for what she had given him, 
that at times he longed for her intensely, and 
yet that he was sure this longing would utterly 
cease in years to come. 

What a tangle—of wanting and rejecting! 
Frances stood for the past and Aline for the 
present; but in the future which he dimly feared 
and desired, he wanted neither of them, wanted 
instead some elusive, lovely, and highly im¬ 
probable compound of flesh and spirit that 
might meet his insistent moods and at the same 
time feed his ravenous hunger for companion- 


DIANA 


209 


ship, for understanding, and for a beanty in¬ 
tangible yet enduring. And who was be, to 
demand so much? 

At this point in bis soliloquy young Conway 
entered the room, as vigorous and boyish 
as ever. Brent’s reverie was dissipated. 
Straightway they became immersed in the de¬ 
tails of their relation as lawyer and client. 
And surprisingly there came from the younger 
man’s dazzling fabric of business success 
an illuminating ray that focused upon Brent 
himself. 

“You see how it is, Mr. Appleton. The 
thing’s big—bigger than anything I’ve yet 
handled—but I believe I can swing it, thanks to 
the English company that has woven my cloth 
these five years. Yet of course there is some 
element of risk in expansion; there always 
must be. I must go across oftener, trust more 
to my subordinates here. But I’m depending 
on you people: you’ve shown me how to swing 
things in the past, you will in the future. And 
you personally—Appleton—you’ve helped to 
put over all my plans, and I would like you to 
profit by my success.” 

He paused, and Brent wondered what he 
meant. Conway went on, speaking very 
deliberately: 

“My suggestion is that you come in with us. 
I want to give you some stock, you individually, 
aside from my indebtedness to your firm. I’ve 
put aside a hundred shares in your name—it 


210 


FULFILLMENT 


stands at sixty now, but I believe it will reach 
par in another year. So I’d like to see you 
with a thousand shares—for I’m confident that 
in two or three years you would double your 
money.” 

Brent was conscious of the pleasing glow al¬ 
ways associated with the returns from our 
work which may be termed its by-products, un¬ 
expected, alluring, with a fairy-tale effect of 
magical growth. Money may not buy happi¬ 
ness, but it simplifies and beautifies existence. 
And Brent believed in Conway: the man had 
vision, creative imagination and personal 
integrity. 

They talked matters over, and Brent consid¬ 
ered what amount he might get together for 
immediate investment, whether it would be a 
wise move. He had about a hundred thousand 
dollars in carefully picked securities: had that 
amount been invested in Conway’s business 
three years earlier he would already have 
doubled his stake. Suppose he put up thirty 
or forty thousand; with Conway’s gift he would 
have more than seven hundred shares in Con¬ 
way Cloth, Incorporated. 

When the two men separated after lunching 
together at The Lawyer’s Club, Brent had a 
feeling of lightness, of adventure. He had 
plunged: for almost the first time in his life he 
had taken big risks for the possibility of big 
profits, but in a business enterprise that he 


DIANA 


211 


knew from A to Z and which he had personally 
helped to build and buttress, in which he con¬ 
fidently believed. 

When he left the office he wanted to tell his 
story to some one, and then found that there 
was no one to tell. Peter Tomlin happened to 
be out of town for a day or two. Frances had 
a level head, but in money matters she was in¬ 
variably conservative; moreover he did not 
want to see Frances, much less confide in her. 
And Aline? She would be enormously inter¬ 
ested, and still . . . He telephoned that he 
would not be home to dinner, and then walked 
up town in the delicate May dusk, wishing that 
Boblee were home, that he could have taken her 
for a drive. But he supposed that Frances 
was using the car: even if it were in the garage 
he had no desire to drive alone, and his club 
seemed equally alien to his mood. 

He walked on, passed his own street, up 
Broadway, through Union Square, now 
boarded up because of mysterious repairs, or 
arrangements for one of the innumerable pa¬ 
rades in which the City Government seemed to 
delight. Once it had been a beautiful park, but 
to-day it seemed arid and ugly, wholly without 
charm, so that he saw Madison Square—its 
fountain and beautiful old trees—with a feel¬ 
ing of relief. At least this fragment of an 
elder New York had not altered or deteriora¬ 
ted, since the war. This afternoon it was at 


212 


FULFILLMENT 


its loveliest, everywhere the bright yet delicate 
green of early spring, the Square itself edged 
by varied buildings of all types and sizes. 

He dropped into a seat, and instantly a wave 
of depression broke over him, engulfing him. 
Some association of ideas brought back Bob- 
lee ’s illness with a vividness that appalled him, 
and then with relief he heard a voice speaking 
his name: 

“Mr. Appleton! How lucky to be meeting 
you—with a letter from Boblee in my pocket.” 

Miss Marlowe looked spring-like in a gray- 
green frock, with a peplum that suited her 
amazingly and a small green tricorne on her 
head. Under the straw of her hat her hair was 
cloudy, save for the separated strands, curly 
and pliable like dark vines, and trembling in 
the breeze that may always be found in Madi¬ 
son Square. 

In a moment she was sitting beside him, 
reading him bits of Boblee’s letter. 

“She’s getting stronger by leaps and 
bounds. This is the best I’ve had—almost like 
her old self. And yet—” 

“And yet?” he echoed, looking at Boblee’s 
English teacher with interest, at her flushed 
cheeks and dark gray eyes and at that lovely 
line of throat showing above the green peplum. 

They seemed pleasantly remote, despite the 
people passing and the roar of traffic on Fourth 
Avenue. From where they sat they could see 
the sparkling mist of the fountain rising and 


DIANA 


213 


falling. Diana reflected, her head poised 
slightly on the side, like the head of some 
thoughtful bird, her long fingers affectionately 
smoothing the envelope in her hand. 

“It’s Pat. Boblee hasn’t answered one of 
his letters, and when I see him it seems rather 
awful,” she said slowly. “It isn’t like her to 
neglect her friends. Three months ago they 
saw each other constantly—were really de¬ 
voted. And now Boblee’s utterly changed, and 
poor Pat wretched. ’ ’ 

Brent was irritated. Of course Boblee had 
liked the boy, but she was still a child, and chil¬ 
dren are fanciful. On the whole Brent had 
been relieved that she seemed to have forgotten 
Pat, although he was a nice enough boy, as 
boys go. He knew the young man’s family and 
liked them, but wasn’t Miss Marlowe making 
too much of a mere adolescent fancy? 

Diana turned her head a little, so that he 
could not see her eyes. 

“You haven’t seen Pat lately, Mr. Appleton. 
He really cares. After all he’s nearly twenty- 
three, and Boblee eighteen.” 

Brent said explosively exactly what Pat had 
once told Boblee older people would say: 

“Calf love, Miss Marlowe! After all what 
does it amount to?” 

Diana was silent. But after a little she said 
seriously: 

“There’s a story somewhere—I’ve forgotten 
the author—about an English boy in India, se- 


214 


FULFILLMENT 


cretly married to a girl at home. While his 
friends at the army post are criticizing him for 
being stingy, and no sport, he is sending home 
every penny he can spare and dreaming of his 
girl wife, and later on, of their little son, whom 
he has never seen. Then comes a telegram that 
the child is dead—and, after this, that his wife 
has run away with another man. . . . The au¬ 
thor shows you the boy’s soul—pictures a deso¬ 
lation, a depth and quality of pain—that no boy 
of that age has a right to experience. It’s all 
terribly real. And, in spite of the fact that 
Pat is quite unlike that inarticulate young Eng¬ 
lishman he reminds me of him, now. ’ ’ 

She was looking beyond Brent at reaches of 
blue, the swiftly changing loveliness of Spring 
skies. He said finally, in a voice that made 
her turn quickly toward him: 

“Yes, you’re right. I’ve been talking 
drivel! I am the fool—not Pat! That story 
is one of Kipling’s—and it’s true that boys of 
twenty can suffer hideously. Perhaps no pain 
in after years is so utterly without hope ...” 

She forgot Pat, realizing that Brent Apple- 
ton was looking back into his own past. 

“It’s nearly nineteen years ago, Miss Mar¬ 
lowe. I was younger than Pat—the girl was 
hardly older than Boblee. My room mate at 
college and I went off on a walking trip through 
New England, until he fell ill. His sister came 
on from the South—to help me nurse him, and 


DIANA 


215 


for three weeks we were thrown together in the 
wilderness, the nearest village, and the doctor, 
being seven miles away. When the boy was 
well and she went home, we were secretly en¬ 
gaged, although neither of us had any money, 
and I knew that my family would laugh at the 
idea of my marrying—a college boy barely 
twenty-one! We wrote constantly, the next 
summer her brother had a job, but I went back 
to the camp, and she came too—or rather she 
boarded at a farm house a mile away. But we 
saw each other every day, all day. I begged 
her to marry me then, but she wouldn’t. She 
was afraid it would hurt me with my family, 
prevent my studying law. But we had those 
few days together. And the last afternoon we 
climbed the peak we called our mountain, and 
stayed late, cooking our supper over a fire. 
The moon came up—we seemed to be on top of 
the world—looking down on silver mist, on 
the dark glimmer of a lake. I remember she 
said the trees looked like black lace . 9 7 

He stopped abruptly; they both heard with 
surprise the noises of the thudding, hurtling 
city. Then he went on: 

“I can see her now—her thin, eager little 
face caught by the firelight, and lit by a flame 
within. All these dingy years I’ve hardly 
dared to remember that one beautiful thing 
I’ve known—untainted by spiritual failure, or 
by material success. Six weeks later it was 


216 


FULFILLMENT 


all over—she was killed in a stupid accident!” 

Diana sat very still, her eyes smarting, her 
hands clenched until the knuckles hurt. There 
was nothing to say, she knew. . . . But his mar¬ 
riage—what must a man’s marriage be when, 
after eighteen years, an episode in boyhood 
remains so poignant? If Boblee’s English 
teacher had ever envied Frances Appleton her 
beauty and her secure place, she envied her no 
more. 

To all appearances they were a placid, laconic 
pair on a park bench, a space between them, 
not even looking at each other. The fountain 
rose and fell, sparkled and splashed; children 
played on its edge with shrill cries; tired men 
and frowsy women loitered past, while from far 
above them came the insistent drone of an air¬ 
plane. At last Brent said in another tone, 
lightly, almost gaily: 

“So I’ll look Pat up to-morrow. I ought to 
have done it before.” 


He spoke of Pat, but he was already wonder¬ 
ing why he had told her that incident, shared 
with no other human being in all these years. 
It had been quite unnecessary: he could have 
conceded Pat’s need of sympathy—the sincerity 
and depth of the boy’s feeling—without putting 
into banal words his one small precious episode. 
Yet it was not the first time he had said unex- 


DIANA 


217 


pected things to this girl, taking her across the 
decorous outer threshold into the lonely inner 
court of his life. Why! 

Perhaps she answered his unspoken question; 
it seemed so to Brent. 

i ‘ I think a good many of us have known some¬ 
thing a little like that, in our youth—a caring 
fresh and young and beautiful. Not so perfect, 
and perhaps interrupted by Life instead of 
Death—but usually there ’s something. And 
aren’t we fortunate, Mr. Appleton, when Time 
leaves the beauty of it unmarred by his grimy 
fingers?” 

Her face was grave, wistful, and yet Brent 
thought it had the look of one who accepts and 
faces bald unadorned truth, an attitude which 
safeguards even the temperamental Romantic 
from the cheapness of sentimentality. She had 
imagination and the sure sympathy which can 
spring from nothing else. But she was looking 
up at the great clock. Above it red lights 
were flashing the hour as twilight drooped 
over the city, converting placid day to eerie 
dusk. 

“I love it best at this time,” said Diana, 
“this old Square, once so famous, almost for¬ 
gotten now save by those who work in some of 
the great buildings. Yet I think even the 
Plaza is less characteristic of the something 
that makes New York.” She added: 

“But I must go. You see, your friend, Dr. 


218 


FULFILLMENT 


Tomlin, is coming to dine with me. Oh, yes, 
he’s back; he called me up at noon. Mr. Apple- 
ton, why don’t you come too? There’s dinner 
enough for three, and the Doctor was telling 
me only the other day that he had seen so little 
of you lately that he almost wished your health 
weren’t so ‘flamboyant,’ since then you might 
not be so ‘dashed independent’—his words, not 
mine.” 

Brent laughed, and wanted very much to ac¬ 
cept. Recently there had been a deadly chill 
about all his meals at home, with Frances and 
without Boblee, a sort of shared loneliness, now 
that they no longer expected to spend their 
future together. 

“There’s no real reason why I shouldn’t— 
beyond the fact that Peter may want to 
throw me out. But I’ll risk that—if I may 
telephone. ’ ’ 

While he did his telephoning she disap¬ 
peared, and the only evidence of her nearness 
was a sound of running water, and then the 
tinkle of something being beaten, with a silver 
fork against a china bowl, Brent thought. 

He walked idly about the room, and thought 
how alike are people and the places in which 
they live. For Frances, cool high tints, expen¬ 
sive furniture in velvet-carpeted, finely-pro¬ 
portioned rooms; hangings of the most delicate 
design and color, few pictures, fewer books, 
none of what she scornfully described as “clut¬ 
ter.” —For Aline warmer colors, brighter 


DIANA 


219 


lights, French novels, fashionable magazines, 
and everywhere gay cushions, soft couches, and 
chaifs much padded. In her rooms there were 
usually flowers, often his flowers; he still sent 
them twice a week. Chocolates and cigarettes, 
too, and how pretty Aline looked smoking: her 
rooms were pretty, too, gay, feminine, dainty. 
Yet he knew that he did not wholly like them, 
possibly because of a note of luxury too insist¬ 
ent, too subtly provocative. 

He looked now at Diana Marlowe’s room, 
where she lived and worked, with a definite 
curiosity. Pleasant, full of books, of old etch¬ 
ings and yellowed engravings, it was in no 
sense untidy, and yet it lacked that untouched 
look characteristic of Frances’ drawing room, 
that air of having just been set in perfect order. 
Diana’s room was orderly, too, but it was a 
pleasant, uncrystallized order, as though the 
chairs would not mind being moved, or the desk 
being used, or the books read. 

To-day the old mahogany desk was open, and 
papers were scattered about, while a tiny type¬ 
writer, a sheet of paper in its mouth, looked as 
human as a watch dog, and seemed fiercely to 
inform intruders that it was on guard. 

Brent chuckled at the fancy, and kept away 
from the desk and the manuscript which, from 
this distance, certainly suggested verse. He 
peered at the books, some of them old and 
shabby, others with the printer’s ink still fresh, 
Thackeray and Hergesheimer cheek by jowl, a 


220 


FULFILLMENT 


fine old edition of Jane Austen—when had he 
last seen one!—Browning, Shelley, Keats, and, 
crowding them, Drinkwater and Vachel Lind¬ 
say and Sara Teasdale. Then there were long 
lines of modern novels, from Hardy to May 
Sinclair and Willa Cather. 

Brent took out Maxwell’s “Mrs. Thompson” 
to refresh his mind concerning a fine chapter 
dimly remembered, and then idly wandered to 
the window, hook in hand. The lamps of the 
Square, the towers,—one huge, arrogant, 
pricked with countless scattered lights, the 
other dark and slender against the pale evening 
sky—the whole vivid pageant of the city—all 
this explained why Diana had chosen to live 
upon a commonplace business street many 
blocks from the Maxwell School on Park Ave¬ 
nue. For the outlook had charm, sharp charac¬ 
ter, often a touch of magnificence. Brent had 
heard distinguished architects cavil at the Met¬ 
ropolitan Building; it lacked distinction, they 
said, was another example of a great opportu¬ 
nity wasted: oh yes, there were buildings with 
towers, two or three of them, really fine, but 
this one ... a poor thing, notable only for 
what all Americans worship, mere size! 

All of which, Brent considered, might or 
might not be true, he did not know. The aston¬ 
ishing thing about many skyscrapers—and this 
one more than most—was the way their lines 
blended with other buildings and with city 


DIANA 


221 


smoke and perpetually changing skies, to pro¬ 
duce effects sometimes of sheer splendor, and 
again of such harmony as amounted to the es¬ 
sence of impalpable beauty. . . . 

Analyzed, this building as a whole might fail 
in many essentials. Yet to-night any artist or 
poet or other mortal with an eye for tone and 
mass must find the thing marvelous against a 
sky of deep violet that seemed undershot with 
gold. 

A voice slipped into his reverie; it was like 
the missing chord in music that has seemed 
incomplete. 

“You love them too—the old tower, delicate 
and dim, and the newer one, big, bright, too in¬ 
sistent, perhaps, yet so gallant.” 

Brent turned and saw that she had changed 
her frock: she wore a thin summer dress, 
vividly blue. The short sleeves showed her 
round yet slender arms, while the color brought 
out the warm tints of her cheeks and lips and 
the darkness of her hair. For almost the first 
time he realized that this tall woman had her 
own kind of beauty, but with a suggestion of 
something untamed about her, something linked 
in his mind with outdoors, with woods, hilltops, 
a wind blowing. Brent did not know what this 
something was, but perhaps an observant 
woman might have told him that in an age of 
sleek, artificial looking, carefully confined hair, 
Diana’s curled wilfully, and was never sub- 


222 


FULFILLMENT 


jected to the indignity of hair nets, however in¬ 
visible. With the married man’s trained per¬ 
ception and tact he said: 

“What a pretty frock, and how well it suits 
you. ’’ 

She was kneeling beside him on the window 

“It’s old as the hills, but I like it too.” 

To Brent it was surprising, this feeling of 
intimacy imparted by watching that blurred 
vista—seen as from an opera box—of velvet 
darkness lit. by innumerable lights that rose 
higher and higher into the mysterious sky, soar¬ 
ing above the flat, mottled, creeping streets. 

“Sometimes,” she was saying, softly, “I 
turn out the lights, move the big chair over 
here, and lie in the dark, waiting. It comes to 
me, verse that seems to say itself, different 
from things I write at my desk. The lights— 
springing out of blackness—hypnotize me! 
Oh, whatever it is in the daytime New York at 
night is sheer poetry!” 

“Can’t you give me a bit of your verse, 
now?” 

She spoke wistfully: “It’s never good 
enough. . . . Ah, if it only were. ...” But 
presently she quoted a few lines. 

“It’s about one of the new buildings, seen 
at twilight: 

“For somehow, in the processes of birth, 

The Thing has torn a splendor from the earth, 

A wonder from the sky, from day and night 


DIANA 


223 


Color and line, warmth, harmony, delight, 

This shape imperial, upspringing there 
Where all these centuries was only—Air! ’’ 

Brent looked at her with a mixture of curios¬ 
ity and unwilling admiration, and then said 
something foolish, with a Boblee flavor: 

“You’re hypnotized, certainly. And yet I 
believe it ‘ loves you back , 9 this crazy town. It 
belongs to you more really than to us who were 
born here, perpetually grumbling about its 
inconveniences, and stupidly taking its beauties 
for granted.” 

She smiled a little, but her eyes were sad. 

“Perhaps—if love makes belonging!” 

Again they fell silent. At this hour the 
streets were more quiet, the heavy drays and 
trucks were gone for the day, the swift motors 
with horns and sirens were farther uptown, on 
Fifth Avenue or Broadway, or in the long glit¬ 
tering double current sweeping Park Avenue. 
In the stillness Brent was conscious that he was 
waiting for something she might say, or some¬ 
thing he might do, he did not know which. And 
then came Peter Tomlin’s voice booming into 
their warm silence: 

“In the sentimental dusk—why, by the Lord 
Harry, if it isn’t Brent!” 

Diana laughed and sprang to her feet. 
Golden lamplight bloomed at her touch. Peter 
was informed that he was late, that dinner was 
waiting, was probably spoiled! But presently 


224 


FULFILLMENT 


it was served beside the window—with the 
tower lights for candles. 

“Mushrooms,” commented Peter, “hot bis¬ 
cuit, and salad, with coffee fit for the gods!” 

Later on, however, both Brent and Diana 
grew aware that the Doctor’s mood was som¬ 
ber. There were deep lines in his face: he 
looked old, almost ill. Diana said at last: 

“What is it, Doctor? Have you lost a pa¬ 
tient? Everybody must, sometimes.” 

Peter was staring out of the window, his 
shoulders hunched, his big body slouching in 
his chair. At her question he straightened 
and turned toward these two friends of his: 

“No, it’s not death, nor the usual case of a 
sick body. It’s one of those damnable mental 
cases you try to treat, knowing from the start 
that it’s beyond you. ...” 

“A woman?” asked Brent. 

“Yes. One of those little fools whose folly 
ought to disgust you, and would—if she were 
not in the power of something bigger than 
herself.” 

“ We ’re safe. And we ’ll never know who she 
is, anyhow. So tell us about her,” said Diana. 

Tomlin made that queer sound, between a 
grunt and a sigh, characteristic of his serious 
moods. 

“It’s an old story—common as birth and 
death—the tale of the married man and the im¬ 
prudent woman, in love—protestations and 
promises on the man’s part, until he gets what 


DIANA 


225 


he’s after. Later, when he is free to marry, 
this poor little devil is the one woman on earth 
whom he is sure he doesn’t want. Outcome, 
high tragedy—the man departs, the woman at¬ 
tempts to kill herself, and fails. Which is 
where the doctor comes in—I have been wish¬ 
ing to Grod I were a circus clown or a traveling 
salesman—anything under Heaven but a help¬ 
less physician.’ ’ 

“I should think so,” said Brent. But Diana 
remarked quietly: 

“You’ve helped her, Doctor. Now you’ve 
got to forget her—and play with us.” 

She poured his coffee, and Brent saw that she 
was doing for Peter Tomlin what more than 
once she had done for him, helping him to re¬ 
lax. The talk drifted to impersonal topics; 
they did justice to the excellent meal, and 
finally sat smoking in the dusk, conscious of the 
beauty and peace of the old Square at a time 
when the crowds have withdrawn and when for 
a brief space the battle of the Five Million 
seems mysteriously won. 

In this pleasant unpretentious room Brent 
found himself pondering upon the obvious truth 
that money and service and space have no mo¬ 
nopoly upon that illusion we call charm. 

Home again at midnight, he was amused to 
discover that he had forgotten to speak of his 
investment to either of his friends. Tomlin’s 
story of the “poor little fool,” lingered in his 
mind, and he thought of Aline with a sort of re- 


226 


FULFILLMENT 


lief—that she was so utterly unlike the woman 
Tomlin had described. He could not imagine 
Aline caring so for any man . . . not in that 
way, or to that extent. . . . 


A few days later Pat appeared at tea time 
and when Diana saw his face she was sure Bob- 
lee must have written to him. But except for a 
scrawled note of thanks for some flowers, he 
had not heard from her since her illness. He 
had seen Brent, and reported that after all Bob- 
lee’s honorable uncle was a good sort. 

“You see, Miss Marlowe, until now he has 
just barely tolerated me. Even when Boblee 
was on the edge of Kingdom-Come he acted as 
though I had no right to feel so—so rotten— 
as though that were his private privilege. But 
this time he was different. He called me up, 
asked me to lunch with him downtown—on 
Saturday—when he knew I’d be free. He took 
me to one of those skyscraper clubs where the 
nabobs of Wall Street confabulate about call 
money—whatever that is—and prohibition, and 
the income tax. It was great—the sight of all 
those plutocrats and the smell of their money!” 

She laughed. “It sounds magnificent. But 
somehow Mr. Appleton, as I know him, doesn’t 
fit into the picture. ’ ’ 

Pat agreed. “He does seem sort of casual, 
for a top notch attorney in one of the big firms. 
Come to think about it, he seems more like an 


DIANA 


227 


artist or a writer than like a hard-shelled New 
York lawyer. But this time he treated me like 
a real man and not just a little college boy— 
which was a comfort. He even said he hoped 
I’d win out—though with a long-distance 
clause. He seems to consider that Boblee may 
possibly marry—when she's about forty!" 

Occupying the biggest chair in the room— 
and he needed it—Pat looked at home, content. 
Diana invited him to smoke, not a mere piffling 
effeminate cigarette but his pipe, and they had 
a quiet hour together. Yet before he left she 
saw again that somber, almost sullen expres¬ 
sion so out of character with his frank youth. 
This time he addressed her absently, with no 
polite prefix: 

“ Diana, have you any idea who the blamed 
skunk is? I mean that beast who ran Boblee 
off her trolley? Appleton seems to think it was 
nobody in particular, and Tomlin doesn't want 
her bothered with questions. I see the sense of 
that, and I haven't gone into my own feelings 
about the thing with either of them. For one 
thing, she would hate me to. But she is 
changed, and in ways pneumonia doesn't 
explain. There's some nigger in the woodpile. 
And I want to know who the devil I'm hating.'' 

“But if you're right, if there is some partic¬ 
ular person, I can't see that our knowing the 
story will help particularly—especially when 
Boblee doesn't want us to," she countered. 

Pat exploded suddenly. “I don't care what 


228 


FULFILLMENT 


Boblee wants! I do want to know, and even¬ 
tually I’m going to find out. Then I shall know 
exactly how to act.” 

Diana felt a slight tingling through her body. 
She realized that the attitude of the older men 
—Tomlin’s insistence that Boblee should be let 
alone, and Appleton’s entire lack of imagina¬ 
tion as to the cause of that walk in the storm— 
interested her less than this young barbarian’s 
suspicion and furious curiosity. Pat might be 
primitive, jealous, illogical, but he was very hu¬ 
man. She was sure it was not a problem that 
could be solved by brute force, but she spoke 
soothingly: 

“I understand, Pat. Only don’t do anything 
about it without talking it over with me first, 
will you?” 

He looked startled at this, but she went on, 
peacefully: 

“I’ll look out for your interests, with Boblee. 
After all you want her more than any two¬ 
penny revenge against some unknown cad, 
don’t you?” 

Pat allowed that he did, but just the same he 
wasn’t going to make rash promises. 

“I don’t ask you to keep the peace, only to 
tell me when you’re ready to break it,” she 
said. ‘ 1 After all, I feel a little the same way— 
and I’ve never had any prejudice against a fair 
fight. So be nice about it, Pat.” 

He laughed at her wheedling tone, and 
agreed that he would give her due notice. 


DIANA 


229 


“But I won’t promise to take your advice, no 
matter how good it is.” 

They shook hands on it, Diana confessing 
that she, too, hated promises and unsolicited 
advice. Pat went to his favorite bookshop and 
ordered for Boblee several novels he knew she 
had not read, and which Diana liked. He dis¬ 
covered for himself a book of modern verse in 
which he dipped with a sense of exhilaration, 
and then marked in several places. 

A week later, wrapped in a fur coat, Boblee 
sat on a windy hilltop and carefully read all 
the penciled passages first. 


II 


To Southerners, living anywhere between 
Baltimore and Savannah, Manhattan is tacitly 
regarded as a summer resort by all save 
the super-sophisticated. This becomes obvious 
in July, when New York’s principal res¬ 
idence streets are deserted, sober stone houses 
and soaring apartments equally empty of their 
owners, yet with hotels and avenues and shops 
crowded with visitors who turn the conven¬ 
tional city into a kind of glorified Midway, as 
gay as the visitors at Atlantic City and as 
extravagant as the hordes of Americans shop¬ 
ping in the Rue de la Paix. 

It was on one of the shining days which jus¬ 
tify, not the absent New Yorkers, but the shop¬ 
ping visitors, that Brent Appleton drove to the 
steamer with his wife. Frances was bound for 
a summer in England, and quite possibly she 
might winter in Paris. For both it was a 
strange sensation—this realization that they 
were driving straight out of their married life 
into a problematic separate future. That day 
ended their years together in the Eleventh 
Street house, ended their marital experiment. 

“I haven’t badgered you, Frances,” Brent 
said at last, “and I don’t mean to nag—now 

230 


DIANA 


231 


or at any time. But I hope when you ’re settled 
over there—that you’ll see the wisdom of a 
divorce. It’s the wisest solution for us both, 
I’m sure.” 

Charming in a frock of heavy Japanese silk, 
with a little straw hat trimmed with flat blue 
flowers, Frances looked at him with eyes 
equally blue, but as remote as the summer sky. 

“We’ve discussed that, and as you know I 
dislike divorce: in our case it seems unneces¬ 
sary! But if I change my mind I’ll let you 
know. ’ ’ 

“Miracles do happen,” said Brent cheerfully. 
“ Perhaps it will be you, and not I, anxious for 
a final decree in a year or two! ’ ’ 

She flushed. “I’ve done with marriage for 
all time!” 

She did not add “And so have you!” But 
Brent felt that that was what she implied. She 
said, later, in another tone: 

“You have been very generous about the set¬ 
tlement. And I appreciate it. Perhaps I am 
accepting more than I should—” 

“No, you are only taking what I offered, 
Frances. I’m quite satisfied.” He went on 
thoughtfully: 

“But do you know, we’re rather an unusual 
couple in that we’ve never had any difficulties 
about money! Experts on the subject say that 
six divorces out of ten may be traced to some 
disagreement over dollars and cents. The hus¬ 
band is incompetent, or stingy, or the wife is 


232 


FULFILLMENT 


extravagant. But you have managed wonder¬ 
fully and I’ve tried to be square—at least that’s 
something to our credit.” 

“I think it’s a great deal,” said Frances, and 
she said it so nicely that Brent felt grateful and 
wondered about her anew, as though perhaps 
he had never really known her in those fifteen 
years. 

On the liner they found her stateroom full of 
flowers, fruit, and books, and a group of people 
waiting to bid her good-by; among these was 
Mrs. Van Cleve Porter, a handsome woman of 
forty, who was taking charge of Frances ’ studio 
and workshop. Aline had sent a basket of 
fruit, but she was not visible, for which Brent 
was thankful. He wanted to say good-by at 
once and leave, but a realization that the public 
expects a husband to endure the pangs of part¬ 
ing until the last possible moment kept him 
talking to Mrs. Porter,. while Frances chatted 
gaily with two or three men. It was in this 
sort of impersonal yet appreciative group that 
she was always at her best, beautiful, tactful, 
absorbing admiration as a thirsty plant ab¬ 
sorbs water. Then Dr. Tomlin appeared, big, 
homely, pigeon-toed, and as truculent as a 
March wind. 

Brent knew instantly that his friend had 
come to his rescue, but the effect he produced 
upon the little group was amusing—their ap¬ 
preciation of the compliment paid Mrs. Apple- 
ton by a busy physician in the busiest hour of 


DIANA 


233 


the day. Frances was greatly pleased: if she 
knew that Tomlin had never liked her she had 
never confessed as much to Brent or to her¬ 
self. Now she greeted the doctor as though 
his coming were the most natural thing in 
the world, and begged him to take care of 
Brent. 

It was all commonplace and cheerful, a scene 
pleasantly assuring the world that the Brent 
Appletons were a devoted couple with devoted 
friends, and if Brent was amused and Tomlin 
cynically entertained by the vagaries of this 
pocket sample of “Vanity Fair,” neither of 
them suggested such profane levity by look or 
manner. 

When finally Brent had kissed Frances good- 
by with the proper effect of mingled reserve 
and affection, and when Mrs. Van Cleve Porter 
had pressed her friend to her bosom and as¬ 
sured her that she regarded the studio as a 
sacred trust, the last “All Ashore” sounded 
and Brent and Tomlin found themselves to¬ 
gether on the pier. 

They stood a little apart from the crowd and 
watched that curious dramatic effect, always 
freshly appealing, of a great liner making its 
stately exit, sliding by them, as in a stage scene, 
with flags and handkerchiefs waving, men 
laughing and women weeping. 

“Queer how it gets your imagination,” said 
Brent, “no matter what—” 

He broke off, and they watched Frances 


234 


FULFILLMENT 


standing beside the rail, sunshine in her hair, 
her blue hat a spot of bright color, above her 
head a patch of shining cloud in that other deep 
sea of sky. Then her figure became blurred, 
fading slowly as the ship moved on and out like 
some great stealthy bird. 

In their cab the two men looked at each other. 

“It’s one form of failure—that’s what gets 
me,” Brent said grimly, adding after a mo¬ 
ment : “ With you, Peter, it was the inevitable, 

Death that comes to all. There was dignity, 
beauty, about your grief. But when a man’s 
marriage falls to pieces in the middle of his life, 
it’s a reflection on his character, or his men¬ 
tality, or both. ’ ’ 

4 4 Or is it a reflection on Nature—who tricks 
the poor devils she first bewitches?” said the 
doctor. “ You have plenty of sins of your own, 
Brent, but I don’t believe you are to blame be¬ 
cause your marriage hasn’t panned out. There 
are men—and not a few—who kill their chance 
of any real response from their wives by bru¬ 
tality, or lack of imagination. Others do it by 
ignoring feminine nerves, or slaying passion in 
the rut of habit. You are not that type of blun¬ 
derer. Yet Frances may not be entirely to 
blame, either, though when she married you 
she was old enough to have realized that the 
whole thing was beyond her.” 

“Lack of imagination there too, maybe,” 
said Brent. 

< “Possibly. And if she had been a homely 


DIANA 


235 


woman, with the same temperament, you 
wouldn't have fallen in love with her. But cer¬ 
tain types of beauty are often accompanied by 
this frigidity—which again shifts the blame to 
Nature!” 

This did not satisfy Brent. 

“But Peter, it wasn’t just that. It would 
have meant so much if she had really cared in 
other ways—about my work—if she had ever 
shown any sort of moral or spiritual passion! 
What I wanted was warmth, enthusiasm, not 
only physical response.” 

“True,” admitted Tomlin, hut he added, 
shrewdly: “Yet perhaps sex cuts deeper than 
we know. Usually the woman of strong enthu¬ 
siasm—of what you call spiritual passion—is 
capable of normal response to the right man. ’ ’ 

“And of course I may always have been the 
wrong man,” said Brent. 

“Perhaps no man would be right, for her. 
But after all she’s not unique. The general 
trend is toward asceticism or polygamy—real 
monogamy is almost as much a fine phrase as 
brotherly love, or universal peace.” 

He carried the theme farther, in a mood for 
analysis: 

“Yet I wonder whether marriage, some day, 
may not be big enough to include all kinds of 
people, if they can be matched right—” 

“Who’s going to match ’em?” demanded 
Brent. 

“God knows! Just the same even Frances 


236 


FULFILLMENT 


wants some things that only marriage gives. 
I shouldn’t he surprised if she did it again!” 

Brent grunted derisively: “Which goes to 
show, old Peter, that you know nothing about 
her—she loathes the word marriage.” 

“Oh very well!” said Tomlin. “We’ll see. 
But I hope for your sake she’ll at least get as 
far as a divorce.” 

The cab had stopped at a subway entrance 
and the lawyer got out to take his southbound 
train. But he stood beside Peter for an instant 
and put a hand on his knee. 

“Thank you, old man—for coming. It’s 
helped. ’ ’ 

He was swallowed up in the crowd and the 
chauffeur turned uptown. The older man sat 
deep in his seat, thinking his own thoughts, re¬ 
membering those sunlit years with his own wife. 
The values of life seemed so unfairly dis¬ 
tributed: for him over twenty years of a true 
marriage, years full of work and strain and 
care, yet mellowed and enriched by a deep- 
rooted love, a devotion unexacting on both 
sides, and yet completely satisfying. Whereas 
for Brent fifteen years of marriage had meant 
frustration, loneliness, and disappointment as 
to children—a marriage that was not marriage 
at all. Peter reflected that Brent might still 
achieve some of the normal joys he had missed. 
He was still young, many years younger than 
Tomlin. “If he doesn’t get into some wretched 
snarl before Frances agrees to a divorce,” 


DIANA 


237 


thought the doctor. Not for the first time he 
wondered just how far Brent’s affair with Aline 
Armstrong had gone—whether she actually 
cared for him or was merely out for adventure 
and excitement, like so many detached women 
of the period. Yet she was attractive, espe¬ 
cially when you contrasted her human warmth 
with that beautiful fish, Frances. . . . That 
was why Brent had found her irresistible—if he 
had—for if Frances was polar, Aline was tropi¬ 
cal. “And yet,” thought the doctor, “why not 
a finer type of woman, the sort Brent ought to 
fall in love with—capable of being a real mate 
to a man of his caliber I ’ ’ 

Here Peter’s thought shifted from some 
vague feminine ideal, able to satisfy a fastid¬ 
ious man like Brent Appleton, to a particular 
woman. The rest of the way up town his 
musings followed a path with which they were 
becoming familiar, and the doctor’s face wore 
what the unfeeling might have considered 
a fatuous look, until his lips twisted into 
a sardonic grin as he contemplated his own 
predicament. 

“The typical ‘old fool,’ by Gad! And I 
flattered myself I was past all the danger¬ 
ous ages. . . . But there’s no time limit, 
apparently I” 

Those first weeks after Frances’ departure 
Brent worked under pressure, going to the 


238 


FULFILLMENT 


office early and leaving it late, reading at 
the library of the Bar Association evenings, 
taking his legal problems to bed with him 
and waking up in the morning, fagged and 
spiritless, hut often with some intricate tangle 
neatly unraveled by that part of his mind 
which seemed to function while he slept. The 
heat of July came on; at the office clerks, 
stenographers and the other members of the 
firm began to clamor for vacations, and while 
theoretically a law office is less busy in the 
dog-days, the actual facts indicate small diminu¬ 
tion of either labor or responsibility. 

By August, Brent was lean and white, his 
cheek-bones prominent, his clothes loose. When 
he saw Aline she worried him with suggestions. 
She was staying at a little seaside place where 
she had spent several summers, for she hated 
heat; but she came to town frequently for a day 
or two at a time, and always called up Brent. 
On these occasions he took her out to dinner, 
often to some roof garden, where they could 
hear good music and keep cool. On one of 
these occasions Aline—tanned under her del¬ 
icately adjusted rouge, her eyes sparkling, her 
pretty clothes part of her, like the petals of a 
flower—seemed to him as alien to his mood as 
Frances had ever been. 

‘ ‘ Brent, you ’re stale , 9 9 she scolded. “ You ’re 
stupid—exhausting yourself by more than your 
share of the office load. MHhat you need is rest. 


DIANA 239 

a real vacation, a breathing space to forget that 
yon ever saw a brief or advised a client. ’ ’ 

It was quite true, but Brent, merely smiled 
at her rather wearily and went on with his 
dinner. 

She leaned forward. 

“There’s a place I know in the Jersey hills, 
a house on a high bluff with a view like a mural 
decoration, and miles from anywhere or any¬ 
body. The house belongs to a friend of mine, 
a young widow with a schoolboy son, and they 
are going to England this week. She wrote 
and told me that I could have it for the summer, 
with any guests I liked—and their Japanese 
man, who f s cook when they are home and care¬ 
taker when they’re gone. If I go up on the 
fifteenth, will you come—say for a week!” 

Brent, seeing the color deepen in her cheeks, 
asked himself why he could not take the good 
the gods bestowed? Suppose he went, what 
harm would he do, how alter their already ir¬ 
regular relation? A hilltop with Aline—winds 
blowing, cool starry nights.—In the seclusion 
of their corner, close to the edge of the high 
building with its rail like a ship’s deck, her 
hand touched his and he could feel the pulse 
beating in her fingers. She murmured: 

“Brent, please!—And I want to go home 
early from here. I want—oh Brent, life is so 
futile and we are so lonely!” 

That also was true; he felt the old dominat- 


240 


FULFILLMENT 


ing pull of desire. They left the roof, took a 
taxicab, and Aline slipped into the crook of 
his arm, the faint perfume about her soothing 
his senses like an anodyne. At the door of her 
apartment he hesitated: 

“It’s after eleven, Aline;” but she laughed 
softly. 

“Who knows or cares, Brent? Come on, 
dear.” 

He went up the stair, into the gay little 
sitting room, smelling of roses, with its cool 
linen covers and shaded lights. What, after 
all, was this inhibition which had held him away 
from her for months? He had called it his 
wish to shield her, had assumed that because 
some day he expected to marry her it seemed 
decent now to protect her from himself. But 
the freedom to marry looked improbable, and 
if she did not want to be protected. . . . 

She sang to him, playing her accompaniment 
so lightly that it was like a tune from very far 
away, first her favorite song, Lawrence Hope % 
“My Little One Come and Listen to the Calling 
of the Sea.” Then came the “Malay Love 
Song,” and finally a curious fragment—after¬ 
ward Brent wondered what queer whim had 
made her sing it to him that night: 

“Men should be judged, not by their tint of skin, 

The gods they serve, the vintage that they drink, 
Nor by the way they fight or love or sin, 

But by the quality of thought they think. ’ 7 


DIANA 


241 


All that night, after he had left her, the words 
came back to him with that haunting finality 
which only a few poems ever attain in our 
lives. Everything else might be forgiven, but 
not cheating oneself, wantonly lying to one’s 
recording angel. As Aline lay in his arms he 
had answered her immemorial question with 
the inevitable affirmative—he loved her, of 
course he loved her. Now, to himself, he con¬ 
fessed that he had lied, that love for Aline was 
not in him, that the force which drew him to 
her was not love, not even white-hot passion, 
as it had been at first. 

Ten days later she wrote to him from her 
house on the hill. She was in possession; it 
was a perfect spot, cool, remote, delightful. 
The Japanese was a discreet and gifted person; 
never before had she tasted such succulent 
steaks and salads. When would Brent come! 

He read this note in his office, also another 
communication which had arrived in the same 
mail. It was a brief scrawl, in Boblee’s 
writing, just barely legible: 

“Brent darling: 

“I’m a dreadful idiot, but I fell off that fool horse 
and broke my collar bone—luckily it’s my left arm. 
Dr. Ellery has me all bandaged up as if I were an 
Egyptian mummy. Selim saw one of those horrid 
road engines that’s enough to scare any poor horse to 
death: it even scared me. It was right at the edge of 


242 


FULFILLMENT 


the village, so they picked me up and brought me 
home, and the Ellerys and Diana are taking care of me 
as though I were a brand new baby with paralysis! 
Of course I don’t need you—if you have some awfully 
important case on hand. But if you came up for a 
week it would be wonderful—only don’t, if coming 
will ruin your career—I’m not a Pig, but I do want 
you! “Boblee.” 

P. S. Selim isn’t hurt. Dr. Ellery says when I get 
well I can ride him again—after he’s seen all the 
road engines in Vermont!” 

Brent laughed over this epistle: she was game 
about it, the plucky kid. Yet he was uneasy, 
nevertheless, and automatically proceeded 
to write out a telegram addressed to Miss 
Roberta Lee Appleton, High Ridge, Vermont, 
and then, more deliberately, with several full 
stops for consideration, a note to Aline. He 
had a curious feeling about those two letters, 
a feeling that in some mysterious fashion he 
was responsible for that broken collar bone of 
Boblee ? s. Absurd, of course—but' the thing 
was too damnably timely, the sort of timeliness 
that was always happening on the stage, and 
especially on the screen. The melodramatic 
convenience of Boblee’s accident—the way it 
fitted into his reluctance to join Aline at her 
borrowed house on the hilltop—poked what 
might be called Brent's spiritual funny-bone, 
and even appealed to the streak of superstition 


DIANA 243 

in him, as in most of ns. The gods were in¬ 
terfering. . . . 

He went home, packed his grip, and took the 
evening train from the Grand Central, known 
in New England as “the flyer.” But as he 
lay long awake, conscious of every bump, every 
sharp curve or heavy switching from one track 
to another, the local name seemed a ridiculous 
misnomer. The train seemed to hesitate and 
stumble, a clumsy beast that did not know its 
own mind. From midnight until almost dawn 
those challenging lines continued to haunt him, 
like some ghost that would not be laid: 

“Men should be judged, not by their tint of skin, 

The gods they serve, the vintage that they drink, 
Nor by the way they fight or love or sin, 

But by the quality of thought they think. . . 


in 


White birch trees, early morning sunlight 
filtering through green boughs, a smell of pine 
and balsam, the silvery note of a song spar¬ 
row, and the noise of a brook running down 
the ravine—to this composite of appeal Brent 
Appleton awoke a few days later. 

As yet nobody was up, life at camp being a 
synonym for laziness; but from his cot Brent 
could see a blue scarf of Boblee’s blowing in the 
wind. She and Diana had the rear porch to 
themselves, while he slept on the brook side 
of the cabin on an old army cot of Peter Tom¬ 
lin’s. Inside the house was a huge many- 
windowed living room something like thirty by 
forty feet, dominated by a fireplace in which one 
might have burned a young tree. 

Every window and door framed what seemed 
virgin forest; beyond the rocky bed of the 
brook, flowing ten feet below the porch, was 
this wilderness of pine and hemlock, sugar 
maple and white birch. There was no dwelling 
of man or beast nearer than a farmhouse a.mile 
down the mountain side, and this remoteness 
gave Brent the feeling that he had merely 
dreamed New York and his law office, that they 

244 


DIA X A 


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246 


FULFILLMENT 


a few hours back. And always he could hear 
the brook, babbling, laughing, chattering, croon¬ 
ing. . . . 

His reverie was interrupted by another 
sound, clear, light, warmer than any brook 
murmur: 

‘ 4 Brent, oh-h Brent? Have you got any 
matches ? Diana and I forgot ’em, ab-so-lutely! 
And how we’d get breakfast if you weren’t here 
goodness knows!” 

Brent chuckled. “It’s God’s mercy that I 
smoke, you little scatterbrain. Shall I bring 
them to you—as I am?” 

• ‘ ‘ Goodness no! ” But almost at once, Boblee, 
in a blue kimono, her hair loose and her arm in 
a sling, flashed into view. 

1 6 In my coat pocket, ’ ’ said Brent. ‘ 4 And for 
the Lord’s sake go slow, child. Be careful!” 

Boblee laughed at his tone of horror, and 
pausing by a chair full of clothes, sought 
diligently. 

“Where in the world—oh, here they are, 
oodles of them. Now, Brent, don’t you dare 
give up smoking, no matter how much Peter 
raves. He smokes his old pipe a lot, but he’s 
always trying to get his patients to swear off. 
What on earth should we have done if you had? 
You needn’t get up yet—it’s not nine—only you 
see, Diana and I are always so hungry!” 

Brent discovered that he was ravenous, and 
three minutes later he was in a deep pool, 


DIANA 247 

shaded by a fringe of trees not thirty yards 
from camp. 

When he was dry and in his clothes he caught 
a gust of laughter from the kitchen, and went 
around to share in the work, only to find a 
table already set, just outside the kitchen door, 
cotfee still bubbling in its shining percolator, 
a dish of crisp sausages and another of fried 
apples. Then he saw that even in her culinary 
capacity Miss Marlowe wore knickerbockers, 
rough stockings, and a white blouse open at the 
throat, an extraordinary becoming costume. 
Boblee, still in her kimono, for her bound arm 
made dressing a burden, already sat at the 
table and commanded that the others hurry un¬ 
less they wished her to die of starvation. 

“And you’d better believe Diana is some 
cook, Brent! Her cotfee—isn’t it glorious!” 

“It is,” said Brent, burning his mouth; “also 
it is hotter than Tophet—and these sausages 
—m-m-m—” 

They ate lazily but largely and Boblee asked 
questions about Brent’s office; then, more shyly, 
about Frances and her going abroad, volun¬ 
teering the information that Dr. Peter was com¬ 
ing up to-day—which Brent had not heard— 
though he knew that Tomlin had been up twice 
before, and it seemed that Peter’s visits had 
always brought them from the village to the 
camp, with the other doctor and his wife driv¬ 
ing up evenings and Sundays. 


248 


FULFILLMENT 


“Diana and Dr. Pete are great pals, aren’t 
yon, Diana?” Boblee added, and Diana said 
thoughtfully: 

“He’s a wonderful person; I discovered that 
when you were ill. And he’s more himself here 
than we ever see him in New York, I think.” 

“Of course,” said Boblee. “It’s his right 
place—the way the drawing room at home al¬ 
ways belongs to Aunt Frances, and not to Brent 
or me. She’s prettier there than in any other 
place, just as Dr. Pete is uglier here, and much, 
much nicer! People and places just match— 
or they don’t!” 

Her audience laughed. “Lucid!” remarked 
Brent lazily. But assured of invalid privi¬ 
leges, and with neither Frances nor Aline to 
keep her humble, Boblee went on airily: 

“Well, it’s quite true. Take Diana—she be¬ 
longs in her own apartment, with her view and 
her fire and her books, but she’d be lost in 
Aunt Frances’ kind of place—like—like birch 
trees in a ball room. Yet here you fit in, the 
way Dr. Pete does, Diana.” 

“We all three do,” said Diana dreamily. 
“Perhaps we are really forest creatures, caught 
by some enchantment and chained to the 
city. ...” 

Brent smiled to himself. 

“And the ‘mysterious streets’ you’re always 
talking about, the ugliness that you say only ac¬ 
cents the beauty, your tall towers in storm or 


DIANA 


249 


sunlight—is all that mere makeshift—some¬ 
thing you’d escape if yon could?” 

The other two saw Diana’s lifted head, the 
agate gleam of her eyes. 

“No, oh no! There’s another mood when 
one belongs to city streets and hurrying 
crowds! That’s the joy of being an inconsis¬ 
tent human, not a mere machine. ’ ’ 

After a pause she added, confidentially: 

“You see, if I didn’t love tall towers I 
wouldn’t love trees so welL They wake the 
same feeling in you.” 

“What feeling?” asked Boblee. 

Diana thought about it, her eyes wide and 
gleaming. 

“The feeling that freedom is the most glo¬ 
rious thing there is—freedom to grow, to ex¬ 
pand, to lift up your head toward the sky! 
Houses are chained to the earth, but spires and 
towers leap upward! Flowers stay close to the 
ground, but trees fling their long arms toward 
the clouds and wave them in the wind.” 

Boblee was watching her friend with a rapt 
look, but Brent said, rather heavily: 

“Yet trees have roots, and tall towers deep 
foundations. Surely they aren’t free, in the 
sense that birds are—and airplanes—” 

“Oh, but they are more free, much more!” 
she cried. “Birds have to think about food, 
and flying machines about fuel. They’re al¬ 
ways coming back to earth for supplies and re- 


250 


FULFILLMENT 


pairs. But trees get their nourishment from 
roots that hold them steady—in a storm, they 
can laugh and rejoice, like the little hills, feel¬ 
ing in their branches all the splendid sweep of 
winds from the four corners of the earth! And 
towers have their own kind of roots. They 
spring above tame streets and foul air into 
clean blue of skies and dark passion of storms. 
They’re like people who have all their bodily 
senses as keen as the senses of animals, and 
yet intellect too—perception of beauty beyond 
anything the body knows or dreams.” 

She stopped speaking, and Brent was sure 
that if he moved his hands they would tremble. 

He recalled his words to Tomlin —‘ 1 spirit¬ 
ual passion.” 

His musings were interrupted by an altered 
Diana, no longer an inspired sybil but a most 
practical and swift-moving creature who had 
sprung to her feet. 

“What a loon I am, talking like a book on 
‘How to Know the Wild Towers’ when I should 
be washing dishes. No, Boblee, you can’t 
help! And you needn’t, Mr. Appleton. If you 
two will just go for a little walk they’ll be done 
before you get back.” 

Brent responded by promptly clearing the 
table, and then soberly testing the hot water on 
the kitchen stove. He and Diana washed the 
dishes with thoroughness and despatch, Bob¬ 
lee advisory council and critic. 


DIANA 


251 


The days that followed passed with a cinema¬ 
like swiftness, and Boblee declared that first 
being ill, and then ignominiously falling off “a 
perfectly tame horse/ ’ was worth while if it 
meant getting the people yon like best in the 
place where you wanted them most. Brent felt 
more and more that nothing beyond the en¬ 
circling mountains mattered a picayune to him. 
The city, the law office, the little matter of an 
indifferent wife in France and an impending, 
or unattainable, divorce—these once obsessing 
considerations seemed as remote and irrelevant 
as the Pleiades. 

They tramped the hills during the day and 
sat around the fire after supper, for the August 
nights were cool and crisp. Tomlin, as Bob¬ 
lee said, seemed to belong to this forest more 
than to any other place on earth, and his pleas¬ 
ure in seeing his friends in the setting he 
loved was genuine and vocal. Dr. Ellery and 
his wife, and several pleasant people in the vil¬ 
lage, came and went, but Tomlin, Diana, Brent 
and Boblee lived at the camp, welcomed their 
visitors heartily and saw them go without too 
much regret. Evenings, beside the fire, some 
one might read aloud, but they talked more than 
they read, and often they watched the fire 
silently, yet with that uncanny understanding 
of each other’s moods, almost of each other’s 
thoughts, which an open fire mysteriously in¬ 
duces. 


252 


FULFILLMENT 


Brent watched Boblee with a feeling of re¬ 
lief. Both Tomlin and Diana seemed to feel 
that she had been in some way altered by her 
illness: they were troubled by her attitude to 
Pat, but Brent told himself that he had been 
right—Boblee was simply in no hurry for adult 
experience, love-making. Pat’s very intensity 
had quite possibly frightened and repelled her. 
She seemed now wholly content to be the cen¬ 
ter of a little group of older people, and child¬ 
ishly happy to have Brent with her in this place 
where they both reverted to the primal delight 
of sun and wind and forest. 

Diana Marlowe was surely the happiest in¬ 
fluence in Boblee’s life, thought Brent. To¬ 
gether they seemed intimate, companionable, 
for all practical purposes the same age. 
Hearing them discuss books, social ideas, po¬ 
etry, he received several shocks, and began to 
realize at last that his picture of Boblee as still 
a child lacked verisimilitude. For instance, 
she was enthusiastically reading Galsworthy, 
and Brent had regarded the creator of “The 
Dark Flower” and of “The Forsyte Saga” as 
an author for the adult and sophisticate. Yet 
he heard Boblee gossiping intimately about the 
Forsytes. 

“Diana, isn’t old Jolyon wonderful? He 
makes you feel that there are some real people 
who never grow old, inside—and that’s what 
children don’t understand!” 

At the moment Brent was lying in a hammock 


DIANA 


253 


under the maple tree and the girls were shell¬ 
ing peas on the porch. He could see their 
heads, chestnut brown and almost black, so dap¬ 
pled with white sunlight that they suggested a 
picture by Childe Hassam. 

Diana’s reply was thoughtful, serious: 

“Yes, old Jolyon is a darling. And people 
who live so cleanly, and love nature and chil¬ 
dren, sometimes do sidestep that old cynic with 
the hour-glass.” 

“For instance—Peter,” said the girl. 
“He’s ages older than you, Diana—twenty 
years and more. But when he’s here—fooling 
about with us—he’s not a day over thirty.” 

Diana’s head was bent over those piffling 
peas. Brent wished she would look up. At 
the moment this idealized and youthful Tomlin 
was in the village with his brother-in-law giv¬ 
ing his professional opinion concerning several 
of Ellery’s pet cases. He was due at supper 
time, and planned afterward to show Brent the 
beauties of trout fishing at midnight, when 
the fish might become unsuspicious and docile 
and the shine of a bright lure more intriguing. 


Late that evening Brent, unsuccessful and 
bored, deserted Tomlin who had been standing 
for hours in the brook, suitably attired in high 
rubber boots, knee breeches and a plaid golf 
coat. He looked like a middle-aged Colossus, 
but had been unable to inoculate Brent with his 


254 


FULFILLMENT 


own enthusiasm. Feeling mean about it, but 
none the less determined, Brent made a bee line 
for the camp. 

He found that Boblee had already turned in, 
or to be literal, turned out, since she was sleep¬ 
ing on her cot on the rear porch. The moon¬ 
light outlined her slim length under the Indian 
blanket. She was sleeping like a tired baby, 
and inside Brent found Miss Marlowe sitting 
cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire. 

She looked up as he entered, and he dropped 
down on the rug beside her. 

44 Penny for your thoughts, lady—” 

44 Oh they’re muddled—not worth a penny— 
half dreams, half sleepy wishes. I’ve been 
wishing Pat were here—I do like Pat!—and 
wondering how mothers bear being mothers. 
It must be terrible. . . .” 

44 Just howl I don’t follow.” 

A smile flickered in her eyes at his mystified 
look. 

4 4 The helplessness of parents, Mr. Appleton 
—the fact that they must just twiddle their 
thumbs and pray while their children blunder 
and experiment and sutler. ... It must be 
agonizing, sometimes.” 

4 4 1 ’ll take your word for it. Yet I have al¬ 
ways thought children worth it all—any worry 
or sacrifice.” 

44 They are, of course,” she replied quickly. 

4 4 Having them, loving them, even giving them 
up to other people. It’s heart-rending, and the 


DIANA 


255 


best that Life gives each generation in turn* 
Yet there are moments when I'm quite content 
with my job—teaching other people's children, 
instead of bringing up my own. It must take 
such wisdom, such self-control,—keeping one's 
hands off—and such courage I" 

Brent looked at her speculatively. 

“Yet Tomlin said only the other day that 
he'd never seen a finer—" 

He stopped abruptly, wishing he had not be¬ 
gun. Even in the flickering firelight he could 
see her blush. She made an angry little 
gesture. 

“I do think Peter Tomlin might find some¬ 
thing better to do than to discuss me!" 

She rose to her feet with dignity and found a 
sedate rocking chair, leaving Brent stranded on 
the rug, aware that he had sadly blundered. 
She sat immovable, even in the rocker, not pok¬ 
ing the fire, which badly needed poking. He 
felt mystified and forlorn. Somehow he had 
never imagined Diana angry. After all, had he 
said anything so unpardonable? 

He went away to hunt for a pipe, and when 
he came back she was rocking slowly. She 
looked at him with a small, reluctant smile. 

* ‘ Sorry I was such a little cat, Mr. Appleton. 
But you see—one does hate being discussed, 
analyzed. And so many people say that sort 
of thing to me—it's as though good health, com¬ 
ing of decent stock, were more liability than 
asset. They have a way of wondering why you 


256 FULFILLMENT, 

haven't married, poking you to see what's 
wrong." 

Brent stopped smoking, leaning against the 
mantel, his back to the fire, in that arrogant at¬ 
titude of the dominant male. 

“Yes, I can understand that. I didn't mean 
to poke. I've heard old bachelors say much the 
same thing, and I agree with you that, whether 
one marries or doesn’t marry, it's one's own 
affair. All this talk about the good of society, 
and of the race, is sheer hypocrisy. The free 
man or woman, who married for the sake of 
some impersonal benefit to posterity, would be 
a monster." 

“Exactly!" said Diana. “And likewise a 
frightful prig." 

Her smile flickered, whimsical as the fire¬ 
light, and Brent felt a curious relief. Tomlin 
still did not come, and the flames hypnotized 
them, and made talking easy, so that even frank 
personalities seemed entirely natural. Brent 
forgot to be careful, and was aware that Bob- 
lee's friend trusted him to understand a good 
many things. And then came another phase: 
they sat silent in the great still room, watching 
the flames, the moving shadows on the white 
ceiling, listening to the roar of the brook, with 
night and the forest just outside. 


He broke the silence at last. 

“Do you know, I wondered about it, trailed 


DIANA 


257 


it, caught it and then lost it, long ago—and now, 
to-night, it’s come hack of itself.’ ’ 

She curled deeper in her chair, turned her 
head, so that for an instant he saw the ques¬ 
tion in her dark shining eyes. 

“A witch thing called happiness, Diana .’’ 

She did not stir or speak, but a great log 
broke, fell with a soft thud, flinging up a little 
shower of red sparks. Brent saw the tiny 
rings of her hair, lying loosely upon her brow 
and neck, saw that her wrists and ankles were 
very slender, and her long lines as harmonious 
as music. He wished she would speak again. 
Her voice was the only sound that he wanted to 
hear. . . . But she did not speak; minute by 
minute they waited, afraid to move, almost 
afraid to breathe, each conscious of the per¬ 
sonality of the other, of their physical near¬ 
ness, and of that something, not tangible or 
visible, that possessing, bewitching something 
Brent had recognized and called by name. . . . 

They heard Tomlin halloing up the glen, and 
Diana sprang to her feet. 

“I must go,” she cried. “I-—you ...” 

Brent was close beside her, every instinct 
alert. He wanted to take her in his arms, to 
speak eager words, but the hideous tangle of 
his life seemed to take visible shape, creeping 
out into the room like some repellent monster, 
inhibiting all action. And then that specter 
of the past vanished into nothingness as Diana 
laid a hand lightly on his. 


258 


FULFILLMENT 


"It's been wonderful—for me too. Good 
night.’ 9 

She was gone. Brent drew a long breath and 
went outside to meet Tomlin, who came home 
proudly, bringing his creel of little shining 
trout. 


Those next few days Brent put from him 
every troubling thought, lived only in the 
moment. Boblee’s broken collar bone meant 
that she was cut out of the long tramps 
she had taken earlier in the summer, so that one 
of the others remained with her at the camp, 
reading, lying prone in the warm sunshine, or 
on cool days sitting beside the fire. Sometimes 
it was Brent who stayed with Boblee, some¬ 
times Tomlin, and now and then Diana insisted 
that the two men go off together ; but however 
things fell out Brent was conscious of a dreamy 
satisfaction wrapping him about like a warm, 
brooding peace. 

Sitting with Boblee under the maple tree one 
afternoon he read aloud for a time—poems 
from a volume of Frost Diana had brought 
along—then a haunting tale by Algernon Black¬ 
wood. At last from her hammock, the girl said, 
dreamily: 

‘‘ Let’s talk, now, Brent. It’s nice, having 
you to myself, just this once. Isn’t Diana 
precious? The way she sort of warms up the 


DIANA 259 

world for you—not like a teacher at all . . . 
more like . . 

“Like what, Boblee?” 

“Of course she’s young,” said the girl, 
wisely, “but just the same I think she’s like 
mothers—the kind you read about, and that 
one or two girls at school have—taking care of 
you and laughing at you and loving you, all at 
once! ’ ’ She added slowly: ‘ ‘ You know, Brent, 
I haven’t missed mine so much—since I’ve had 
Diana. ’ ’ 

Brent was conscious of that queer helpless¬ 
ness men experience when feminine conversa¬ 
tion shifts to the topics no man discusses. 
Every adult male, who has known the happiness 
of possessing a real mother, and who has her no 
longer, endures moments when her sympathy is 
the one thing in the universe he craves. But 
his inarticulate self would not dream of trying 
to put this feeling into words. Yet women, 
even as youthful women as Boblee, lean to in¬ 
trospection and analysis. Boblee went on: 

“Of course I’ve had you, Brent—and you are 
a million times better than common-or-garden 
mothers, the kind that are stupid or silly, or 
just ‘mid-Victorian.’ ” 

Brent smiled at her scorn of parental inad¬ 
equacy, but discreetly, and she continued: 

“But you’re only a man—and you’re busy— 
there’s the office,—and Aunt Frances, and all 
the old briefs you bring home—” 


260 


FULFILLMENT 


He felt that this might be a good time to 
broach the difficult topic: 

“Boblee, I think you ought to know one thing 
—that Frances has probably gone away for 
good. I mean that she and I are planning to 
live separately in the future.” 

Boblee sat up so suddenly that she almost 
fell out of her hammock, and Brent caught her 
quickly. 

“Careful, child! You’ll hurt your arm!” 
but she was clinging to him with her free hand: 

“Oh Brent, I ought to be sorry. But I’m 
not!” 

Then they fell silent, old loyalties making it 
impossible to discuss Frances; but Boblee’s 
thoughts raced. To have Brent to herself, to 
be able to see a great deal of Diana—with no¬ 
body to interfere or pour cold water on one’s 
secret enthusiasm—never again to endure the 
old dread that Aunt Frances would say some¬ 
thing or do something that made one ache and 
shiver—such as the things she had intimated 
about Brent, about—but just now Boblee 
had the door of her mind closed against Pat, 
and she wasn’t going to open it! 

“Did she want to go, Brent! I mean—well 
she hasn’t anyone else, the way you and I have 
each other, and Peter and Diana too. Some¬ 
how Aunt Frances always seemed so alone. ’ ’ 

“She has her work—and then a great many 
people care just to look at her, Boblee. I think 
that must count to any woman.” 


DIANA 


261 


Boblee was silent. Work was important; she 
had found that out already. And Aunt Frances 
was beautiful, more beautiful than anyone the 
girl had ever seen. Yet wasn’t there something 
joyless, almost cruel, about a loveliness that 
didn’t warm you, that never made you laugh in 
the sun and love the people who loved you? 
There was no use pretending she was sorry that 
Frances would not be at home when they all 
went back to town: she was not. And she knew 
that Brent also had changed, that he no longer 
felt about his wife as Boblee thought he had 
once felt, rather a long time ago. . . . She said, 
presently, in a different tone: 

“I hope they’ll be back to lunch. Peter said 
they mightn’t but I think Diana wanted to. 
And after all Dr. Pete is not the only one who 
likes to tag after her every minute. ’ ’ 

Brent soberly agreed to this sentiment, and 
quite missed the impish innuendo of Boblee’s 
tone. She was an observant young person, 
with a feminine acuteness concerning any love 
affair. For a long time, now, she had known 
what nobody had told her, that Peter Tomlin 
cared more about Diana Marlowe than he cared 
for any living mortal, more, even than he cared 
for Brent. But it was their own affair, Diana’s 
and the doctor’s—and if Brent did not see it, 
far be it from Boblee to enlighten him! She 
had a semi-maternal compassion for the dull¬ 
ness and myopic vision of mere man. As she 
phrased it in her own mind: “Brent’s a dar- 


262 


FULFILLMENT 


ling lamb—and clever about books and briefs. 
But he almost never knows things —live things, 
about people—unless somebody tells him! ,, 


Later that evening Tomlin played checkers 
with Boblee by the fire, and Brent and Diana 
walked up the glen to the round knob half way 
up Bald Mountain, to see the moon rise. The 
way was along a path scattered with pine 
needles, close beside the brook that raced down 
the mountain through leafy tunnels of brown 
dusk. In the west a dull fire still glowed, a fire 
of copper and burnt sienna, with streaks of 
pure gold here and there, and this brightness of 
the sky was balanced by the deep soft gloom 
of the woods. 

Diana led the way and Brent followed, until 
at last they stood on the treeless brow of a hill 
and gazed over the still forests and at the few 
tiny houses scattered down in the valley. Be¬ 
yond were curving mountains, stretching away 
and away, dark silhouettes against a dazzling 
sky. They waited, and the brightness faded 
to ashes of roses: then bars of mother of pearl 
crossed from horizon to zenith, a dazzling ir¬ 
idescence: when these had disappeared Night 
came tiptoeing over the valley, the sky deepen¬ 
ing slowly until it was that midnight blue that 
painters love. 

Diana sat on a rock overhanging the edge of 
the world and Brent lay at her feet, while the 


DIANA 


263 


moon stole into their exquisite solitude, a silver 
sickle at first, old, worn silver, until, glowing 
brighter and brighter, it became a curved 
golden bow. In the divine quiet the one sound 
they heard was the distant murmur of the 
brook. 

A few weeks earlier Brent had assured him¬ 
self that, for him, youth was gone, happiness 
had become a word, or a child’s dream—an 
illusion dispelled by adult experience. Yet now 
youth and happiness seemed actualities that a 
man might touch by putting out his hand. . . . 
The past was surely a forgotten nightmare, and 
the future remote. Only the present, like this 
rock hanging over the abyss, was strong and 
safe, warm from a long day of sunshine. Be¬ 
fore his eyes lay the dreaming forest, and 
nearer he could see Diana’s face, luminous in 
the brown twilight, the column of her throat 
very white, and the soft darkness of her hair 
a part of Night folding her wings about 
them. 

They sat as still as the forest, afraid that 
some careless word or movement might shift 
them from the ineffable to the commonplace. 
For surely any change must pull down the sky 
above them and overturn Beauty into the abyss. 
If the moment could but endure. . . . Brent 
held his breath, then heard her say: 

“Is it real—all this uncanny loveliness—or 
are we dreaming it ? ” 

For answer he touched her hand and for an 


264 


FULFILLMENT 


instant it lay in his clasp, warm, still, intimate 
as his own thought. 

They came down the mountain at last, 
through the wood, velvet black save where they 
could see the luminous sky or the pale shimmer 
of moonlight on the leaves. That walk to¬ 
gether,—the night wind in their faces, the 
sleepy voices of little birds, and the rush of the 
brook, now quite near and now far down the 
valley,—Brent felt sure he would remember 
it as long as memory lasted. 

Coming into the glow of firelight, they heard 
Boblee’s laugh from the little kitchen, then the 
sound of sizzling fish. Tomlin’s voice rumbled 
cheerfully: 

“Time they were back if they want any 
supper.” 

Diana and Brent stood staring at a glowing 
log: there seemed nothing to say, nothing that 
wouldn’t come as an anticlimax. Yet Diana 
finally broke the spell that enclosed them. 

“Aren’t you starved, Mr. Appleton? The 
smell of that coffee is more intoxicating than 
moonrise!” 

He was close to her and the firelight shone 
on her face. He saw a swift wave of color rise 
from her throat to the parting of her hair. He 
wanted to say: “Yes, Diana: you know that’s 
a lie! ” But he clenched his teeth to keep back 
the words, and then Boblee ran in to the room, 
and was at once all eagerness and welcome: 

“Oh, you’re back—and it’s time! Peter’s 


DIANA 


265 


making the most magnificent batter cakes, and 
the coffee has begun to boil.” 


On the day Brent went home, Tomlin driving 
him to the station in the car Dr. Ellery had put 
at their disposal, Diana left Boblee reading by 
the fire—for the morning was chill and gray— 
and went out into the woods in search of dry 
sticks and chips for kindling. 

Under the trees, following the stream uphill, 
she saw wisps of mist in the hollows, now dis¬ 
persed by fragmentary gleams of sunshine, now 
folding down like a pale silver-colored blanket 
on the brown earth and the soft carpet of moss 
and ferns and goldenrod. It was a day all 
whims and moods, cold in the shadow, warm in 
the sunlight. She found a little dry dell, with 
a misty view of valley and hills and brown 
brook, and here she flung herself on fragrant 
pine needles and became, in her tan sweater 
and knickerbockers, part of the landscape. 

Yet even in this solitude her cheeks burned 
and her close-shut lips made a curved line of 
scarlet, her eyes gleaming like gray slate, wet 
with rain. Outwardly she was very still, but 
her pulse beat rhythmically; it seemed to her 
that her heart was a loud drum noisily pro¬ 
claiming things which the world must never 
know. Hitherto Diana had had faith in her 
own wisdom, her sense of the fitness of things; 
now this faith seemed cruelly betrayed. After 


266 


FULFILLMENT 


those years of her first youth, when she had 
secretly loved a man whom she had never 
hoped to marry, she had felt that his death 
closed the record of her follies. If she ever 
loved again—and she was sophisticated enough 
to realize that people able to love but once are 
rarer than white blackbirds and four leaf 
clovers—she told herself that she would love de¬ 
liberately, wisely, this time, with an eye to the 
“main chance”—not mere financial security 
but something she described as “a happy com¬ 
panionship, a friendship of the mind . 9 ’ 

He might be a man older than herself, with 
work he loved and a wise outlook upon life— 
a man tested, secure, yet with a capacity for 
fresh and ardent feeling. When such a person 
appeared she would let herself go—perhaps 
they would marry, and perhaps they would 
merely become close friends, mutually depend¬ 
ent, yet independent too—which freedom any 
marriage might modify. Yes, it might be wiser 
to keep in single harness. 

During the last year she had thought some¬ 
times that perhaps this secret and not too ro¬ 
mantic ideal had arrived. Peter Tomlin was 
stimulating, companionable, one of those men 
whom a good marriage has made the friend of 
women. For Diana had begun to suspect that 
most unmarried men over thirty-five are either 
self-centered or unmoral: to her it seemed that 
the man who has had a true wife and lost her 
through death, instead of the divorce court, is 


DIANA 


267 


a safer risk when it comes to matrimony. And 
lately, since she had known Peter, she had 
thought more of possible marriage, less of im¬ 
probable friendship. She did not mind his be¬ 
ing older, in fact she liked it, though of course 
it had its disadvantages. Outliving one’s hus¬ 
band might be hard. Yet if one had children— 
and Peter’s children ought to be fine, straight- 
backed younsters—they also would count. 

Then had come an interruption to the doc¬ 
tor ’s quiet courtship, a new factor that changed 
the whole situation. Last Spring, quite sud¬ 
denly, she had begun to think less about Peter 
and more about love; she had known moods 
when she found herself trying to forget the 
voice and the smile of a man who belonged to 
another woman. Eecently had come this ines¬ 
capable intimacy of the camp, with Brent Ap¬ 
pleton constantly by her side, seeming to love 
these green hills as much as she and Peter loved 
them. . . . 

It was not only the look of him that drew her 
—the whole effect of race and breeding and 
mental achievement—it was something sub¬ 
tler, she told herself, something deep in the 
nature of the man. Perhaps what she actually 
cared for most in him was his sensitiveness to 
impressions, his capacity for both pain and 
pleasure, his desire to hold to some sort of 
ideals in a devilishly ironic world. That little 
story of his boyhood for instance: how glad she 
was that he had been capable of such a love all 


268 


FULFILLMENT 


those years ago, and that he had remembered— 
most people managed to forget! That had 
been the first link between them, that and their 
mutual love for Boblee. 

Tomlin had spoken to her occasionally about 
Brent’s wife, no details—rather suggestions 
that Frances Appleton was not what Boblee 
would have called a happying person. Dove¬ 
tailed in with this were her memories of Bob- 
lee’s illness. But now she had fresher memo¬ 
ries—in this very hollow where she lay they 
had sat, side by side,—oh, but it had been white 
magic, that little week! If only they had met 
earlier, before his marriage—though then she 
had been a school girl, younger than Boblee— 
she believed that they would have recognized 
each other instantly. She might be credulous, 
childish, but she was honestly convinced that 
they had been made and meant for each other, 
that only the blunder of Fate had brought them 
together when they were no longer free to 
love. 

She was not the type of woman who weeps 
easily, but to-day, lying in the warm hollow of 
earth, protected from the wind and with the 
pale sunshine touching her cheek, she cried as 
she had cried only once before, the day, nearly 
a week after her mother’s death, when every¬ 
thing that had to be done was finished and she 
had time to cry! 

She had loved her cousin Carter with the 
eager imaginative love of first youth, and she 


DIANA 


269 


had suffered after his death. Yet her pain 
then had been more blind remorse for what she 
had described to Tomlin as her “ stupidity, ’ 9 
than any agony of personal loss. Carter him¬ 
self had killed that earlier wildfire of hero- 
worship and romance. 

This new feeling was mature, a mental recog¬ 
nition as well as a vivid emotion, and now that 
their week was over it seemed quite hopeless. 
Tomlin had told her that Brent’s wife disap¬ 
proved of divorce, that his friend was tied, he 
feared, for life. And she recalled Brent’s de¬ 
pression during Boblee’s illness, his scornful 
self-accusation. At the time she had forced 
herself to put from her mind revelations in¬ 
duced by strong emotion. If the child had not 
been ill he would never have spoken so, to a 
stranger. But now she remembered, sorrow¬ 
fully. If she could only think of him as un- 
happy yet faithful, his honor untarnished, his 
vows unbroken. And yet who was she to judge 
him, she who had never experienced the dis¬ 
appointment of a loveless marriage? 

She lay for a long time savoring this new 
bitterness of frustration. And still, if it were 
possible, would she eliminate him from her life 
by one sweep of her hand, as one rubs out a 
mistaken calculation on a blackboard? She 
knew the answer—that she would not exchange 
this pain of restlessness for the most placid 
peace, no, nor even for a brood of splendid chil¬ 
dren, fathered by some other man. 


m 


FULFILLMENT 


She might not he happy, they must both face 
suffering: she was so sure that for him too it 
had been a week of revelation! But they were 
both in the living world, they could meet now 
and then. If they were self-controlled, inar¬ 
ticulate, they might remain friends. 

Diana told herself, with a lift of her dark 
head, that she would rather have Brent Apple- 
ton for her friend than any other man for lover, 
or husband. . . . That meant that she could 
never marry Peter—but after all Peter had had 
his own love, had known marriage at its high¬ 
est. . . . She wouldn’t insult him by pitying 
him, and she wouldn’t play with him. At the 
first opportunity she must let him know—but 
what? She sighed as she faced that difficult 
half hour when she must tell Peter that she 
could not give him what he wanted, and could 
not tell him why. . . . 

But the shadows were growing longer—she 
must go back to the camp, to Boblee. 


After the clean air of the hills Brent found 
his office an evil place, undermanned, work 
piled up and waiting for him, and, final irrita¬ 
tion, his stenographer, Miss Gail, gone on her 
vacation. The girl who took her place was a 
pert young thing, one of the clock-watching 
breed that sooner or later infests every office, 
and her typing was as brainless as her flapper 
costume indicated—hair, skirts and sleeves all 


DIANA 


271 


bobbed. Brent read the letters be bad dictated 
so carefully, and swore to himself with a reck¬ 
lessness that would have scandalized Miss Gail, 
or even Boblee. He touched bis buzzer, and 
the young person appeared, preoccupied, rouge 
and powder-box in hand, her whole small 
personality bristling with the information 
that it was five o’clock, an end to her working 
day. 

“Miss Marx, these letters are impossible,” 
he said curtly. “You will have to stay and re¬ 
write at least two of them, and correct the 
others.” 

The girl’s small slanting shoulders lifted in 
an impertinent shrug, but Mr. Appleton was 
looking not at her but at the mangled letters 
on his desk, and something in the powerful 
shoulders, the strong fine profile—or possibly 
the junior partner’s impeccable tailoring 
—impressed her slouchy little soul. Like many 
shiftless female clerks she worshiped at the 
shrine of clothes. People seemed to her im¬ 
portant or inconsiderable in exact ratio to the 
expensiveness and timeliness of their wardrobe, 
and she told herself now: “Gee, but he’s got 
some tailor! Mr. Foley’s a fat slob and Mr. 
Frost’s awful dignified, and important, but so 
homely he’d stop a clock, even dressed up like 
a dook. But Mr. Appleton sure has style!” 
Aloud she said with a considerable diminution 
of pertness: 

“All right, Mr. Appleton. I did want to get 


272 


FULFILLMENT 


away early, as IVe got a date. But I guess 
IVe been kind of hurrying / 1 

“I guess you have,” said Brent caustically, 
and proceeded painstakingly to elucidate her 
blunders. It was after six when he read her 
neat final copies, affixed his signature, and 
started uptown in the heat of the sullen August 
day. 

He took a Broadway surface car, finding a 
seat in front beside the motorman, and wish¬ 
ing he had driven downtown in his own ma¬ 
chine, though he had no chauffeur and hated 
the trouble of parking. In the heavy heat he 
thought of clean air and wide sky, of the brook 
and the forest. Those hours with Diana Mar¬ 
lowe seemed infinitely remote, and at the same 
time unforgettable. How he hated the City—its 
humidity and crowding and dirt—and then he 
knew that the City would be different if Diana 
were in it. God, what a fool he was! Bound 
by marriage to a woman who had never loved 
him, and by illicit ties to a woman he did not 
love, he was yet incredibly in love with a third 
woman—in love as he had not been since that 
boyish episode half a life-time away—oh, unbe¬ 
lievably, idiotically in love! 

He went to a French restaurant where he was 
known, and where he always saved himself the 
trouble of ordering. To-night his waiter 
brought him consomme frappe, cold chicken 
served with asparagus, an ice, coffee and an ex¬ 
cellent cigar—and afterward Brent could not 


DIANA 


273 


have told what he had eaten had his life de¬ 
pended on it. Nevertheless by the time he 
reached the cigar he felt better, more optimistic, 
less disposed to jeer at his incredible follies. 
Frances might decide upon divorce in time. 
Aline was no raw girl: she had chosen with her 
eyes open, and during those first weeks of their 
relation there had been no word concerning 
marriage. His having lived through those dis¬ 
appointing years with Frances was reason 
enough for not blundering a second time, tying 
himself to a woman who satisfied neither mind 
nor spirit. . . . 

He telephoned to the garage for his car and 
drove across a bridge in the summer dusk; 
after long stretches of sordid ugliness he came 
at last to open country where the sky seemed 
almost as golden as that sky in Vermont which 
Diana and he had watched together. As the 
sea wind refreshed his tired body his problems 
seemed no longer insoluble, and his late de¬ 
pression appeared childish. After all, he was 
not yet forty: as men’s lives are reckoned to¬ 
day he was still young. And Diana was young, 
Diana loved what he loved, and what Frances 
had never cared for—books, open country, 
children! 

He was home by midnight, rested, cooler, and 
no longer convinced that he had reached an 
impasse. After all on any closed road there 
was always a detour; he and Diana would find a 
way out—together. 


IV 


“Do you mean that you’re alone? That 
you’re going to be here by yourself to-night ? ’’ 
She stood in the doorway, startled at his sud¬ 
den appearance, behind her tall figure the deep 
shadow of the house, although a ray of late sun¬ 
shine touched her dark hair. 

“Boblee went down to the village with Dr. 
Ellery. He thought her a little ansemic— 
wanted to make a blood test—and I stayed here 
to write while she was gone. I’ve been work¬ 
ing like mad, and to-night was planning to rest 
and read by the fire. The Doctor said he and 
Mrs. Ellery might drive up late. But I told 
him that if his patients kept him I shouldn’t be 
afraid. ’ ’ 

Brent stood looking at her, and in some 
strange fashion the dust of travel and the 
weariness of an all but sleepless night van¬ 
ished : he felt and looked alert and young. 

“I’ll drive you down, of course. I have a car 
with me—hired in the village. I didn’t stop 
at the Ellerys’ because I felt so sure you would 
all be here. But first can’t we have supper on 
the porch—and later on an hour by the fire ? ’ ’ 
She agreed that they could, that there was 
plenty in the larder: mushrooms already pre- 
274 


DIANA 


275 


pared, bacon, plenty of fresh bread and butter. 
She seemed about to retreat kitchenward at 
once, but Brent firmly led her to the hammock 
under the maple tree, then dropped down upon 
the grass at her feet. 

‘‘ Town was horrible, Diana. Even your tall 
towers had lost their magic/’ 

“They never lose it,” said Diana with convic¬ 
tion. “You didn’t look at them right.” 

He laughed. “Perhaps I didn’t look at any¬ 
thing right. . . . Certainly I never saw the City 
so ugly, so implacable, a monster stamping one 
under foot—then a pit of black loneliness—un¬ 
til I told myself that I was going to leave it 
and come back to the hills—” 

He broke off, then added quietly: “And to 
you—Diana— Didn’t you know I must come 
back. . . .” 

She did not answer, or stir, and he said 
again: “Didn’t you know?” 

“Yes—I thought you’d want to. But I 
hoped, I believed ...” 

“Did you really ‘hope?’ Didn’t you want 
me to come ? ’ ’ 

“I suppose I did. I suppose, deep under the 
things I tell myself I ought to think and feel, 
I knew. ...” 

“Then you do care a little? You do know 
what I feel—-for you?” 

“Yes—oh yes!” 

He moved nearer and bent his head so that 
his lips touched the hand lying on her knee; 


27 6 


FULFILLMENT 


that was all. Presently he began to talk—at 
first slowly, then more and more swiftly, pour¬ 
ing out thoughts and feelings long repressed. 

“As a lawyer I’ve run up against a good 
many queer things about human nature. And 
one of the ugliest is the fact that men lie about 
themselves to the woman they love and tell the 
whole truth only to those women they neither 
love nor respect. Over and over again IVe 
seen this: I want to avbid it with you. ’’ 

He began to pace the little carpet of grass be¬ 
neath the tree, and near the hammock which 
swayed slowly beneath her light figure. 

“You’re the best thing in my life, and be¬ 
cause of that I want you to know the worst 
there is to know—about me. Do you remember 
some things I said when Boblee was ill?” 

“Yes,” said Diana quietly. 

He sat down on a log beside her. 

“I’d better begin farther back—with my 
marriage. Almost from the beginning things 
were difficult. You see, my wife and I wanted 
different things, saw life differently. As I get 
it all now, she wanted companionship without 
real intimacy, a home without children, a 
husband who would never be completely a 
lover. And I had hoped for all she wished to 
evade. That difference meant something that 
at times has seemed pretty close to tragedy.” 

He paused, smoking silently for a little while, 
and then went on: 

“In those early days I was unhappy, but I 


DIANA 


277 


had some sort of code. Our marriage had been 
a mistake, but perhaps it was nobody’s fault, 
neither mine nor hers. How can a woman, a 
young inexperienced girl, know whether the 
thing she wants is merely to be petted, pro¬ 
tected, told that she is beautiful, or a normal 
marriage with an ordinary man! It’s an ex¬ 
periment at best—any marriage. Then, dur¬ 
ing those first years, she had a bad time. When 
the boy came she suffered horribly—and it 
seemed all for nothing—when the child died. 
Even I—wanting children passionately—could 
see why she refused to go through the thing 
again. Then Boblee came to us, a wonderful 
fresh interest for me, and later Frances found 
work that occupied her time and her talent. 
Things should have been better, in a way they 
were. Yet I wasn’t satisfied, the trouble was in 
me. I couldn’t content myself with a merely 
negative relation.” 

“I think I understand that,” said Diana. 
But she didn’t understand, yet. He continued: 

“However, I had my law office and Boblee. 
Her affection—watching her develop—have 
meant more than I can tell you. When I felt 
embittered, I tried to make work do double 
duty—only to find that the very work you love 
increases your need for—for a full marriage— 
or for what some people get out of it.” 

Diana nodded assent. “Yes, I know. It’s 
lonesome, working just for yourself.” 

“That brings me to the time Boblee began 


278 


FULFILLMENT 


talking about her English teacher. One day, 
on a subway train, I saw a tall young woman 
reading ‘Fortitude.’ ” 

Diana looked up, a questioning puzzled look. 

“She happened to drop her book and — 99 

“Of course,” she cried. “And I couldn’t re¬ 
member where I’d seen you before.” 

“If we had only met then! That evening 
my wife and I went to a play. It seemed to me 
that the hero in the triangle—the lover, not the 
husband, of course—got exactly what I was 
missing. The same evening I was weak enough 
to do what I hadn’t done for a long time— 
make love to my wife. She hated it—just as 
she always had. Within a week I was thrown 
with another woman who was responsive. 
Soon we were seeing each other, then ... in¬ 
timately. I told myself that at last I had what 
I’d always missed—” 

“And hadn’t you?” she asked, almost 
eagerly. “There must have been some happi¬ 
ness—if you both cared.” 

He was walking up and down, his hands be¬ 
hind him. 

“At first it was all dazzling. I even had a 
feeling of recovered self-respect, if you can un¬ 
derstand. And my work prospered, seemed 
easy and interesting. I had been stale. But 
I began to hate the necessary secrecy, the per¬ 
petual hiding, being careful, the cheapness of 
intrigue. ’ ’ 

She nodded. “Oh, I understand that!” 


DIANA 


279 


“And then—Boblee. It seemed to affect my 
relations with her.” 

Diana lifted her head. “Why?” 

“Yon see, they were thrown together some¬ 
times, and I hated it, hated having Boblee with 
her. I was ashamed of myself: who was I to 
criticize? Yet the sting was there, and Bob- 
lee’s illness focussed my mind on that aspect 
of the situation .’ 1 

His listener spoke hotly: ‘ 1 How the old prej¬ 
udices cling to you men—all of you! If she 
wasn’t good enough for Boblee, how about 
you?” 

“Exactly! But, Diana, the fundamental 
thing about emotion is that it’s illogical. 
When feeling is fresh and beautiful you can’t 
kill it by telling yourself how you ought to feel! 
And when it’s dulled you can’t revive it.” 

“I suppose that’s true,” she conceded reluc¬ 
tantly. “But if love has no staying power, no 
endurance— And it’s so horrible for men to 
take from a woman, and then criticize her for 
yielding—regard her as apart, unclean.” 

“I’m not so bad as that, dear! The trouble 
is that it never was love—nothing more than 
excitement, gratified vanity, a mood of the 
senses. Real love includes such moods, but is 
infinitely more,—it means joy in companion¬ 
ship and a sense of responsibility. Diana, if I 
had known you sooner this other thing would 
never have happened.” 

It was her thought too—and the universal 


280 


FULFILLMENT 


excuse. But she was full of her obstinate sym¬ 
pathy for the other woman, in spite of a sharp 
jealousy. 

“But her feeling—how much does she care? 
The world seems so full of married men who 
make love to women they can’t marry—and 
then sidestep the instant they’re free. Do you 
remember Peter’s story? Are you like that 
man?” 

She had risen and now ran up the steps of 
the porch. Brent followed, and they faced 
each other, tall, vigorous, well matched. He 
held his head up, conscious of an unpleasant 
weakness in his knees. 

“I’ve asked myself that same question. But 
Frances says she doesn’t want a divorce—and 
she had a child for me—I don’t feel I can make 
the first move. But if I were free—yes, I be¬ 
lieve she would expect—” 

Put into words the situation sounded as ugly 
as he had known it must. . . . 

“Yet, Diana, tell me this. Is it reasonable, 
even sane, to blunder again with my eyes open, 
knowing that such a marriage must mean an¬ 
other failure? Should any mistake—any ‘sin’ 
if you prefer the word—condemn me to marry 
one woman when I’m in love with another? 
Wouldn’t that be suicidal—and idiotic?” 

Her lips tightened that they might not 
tremble, for through her there ran a swift cur¬ 
rent of pity, the longing to take his head in her 


DIANA 


281 


hands and tell him that she understood, for¬ 
gave, loved him without criticism or any sort of 
insistence that he develop ridiculous and purely 
academic virtues. ... Of course if he married 
anyone it could only be herself—Diana! Any¬ 
thing else was unthinkable. And then she tried 
to see the other woman’s point of view, to 
realize her sense of possession, her feeling of 
having given greatly, generously, because she 
loved. . . . She answered his question at last: 

“I don’t know, Brent. It’s your problem— 
no one can decide for you. And as yet you 
aren’t free to make the first move.” 

They went into the house, ate their supper, 
and after a little tried to talk of other things, 
to put the question by. And presently there 
stole back that pervasive presence, winged, al¬ 
luring, divinely illogical. . . . Everything sep¬ 
arated them, all the traditions of their social 
world—the habit of living decently—the con¬ 
viction inside their minds. Yet the mere fact 
of being together tinged the hour with the 
color of hope, the quality of beauty. 

They talked of anything but themselves now 
—of Boblee, Tomlin, books—of Brent’s office 
and Diana’s work. She was writing her first 
long story, which she hoped might interest a 
magazine editor who had bought some of her 
shorter work; she told him the theme, discussed 
her characters, asked him about a legal question 
involved. 


282 


FULFILLMENT 


Brent answered as lie could and asked ques¬ 
tions in his turn. “Is fiction as interesting to 
you as verse ?” 

“As interesting—-yes.” 

It was after supper and they were in their 
old places by the fire, Brent smoking a pipe, 
Diana in a low chair, with a cigarette. She 
went on thoughtfully: 

“Perhaps in my case verse is a natural emo¬ 
tional outlet, and fiction a matter of intellectual 
choice. Yet isn’t poetry both emotional and in¬ 
tellectual?—Isn’t any art the sum of those two, 
happily blended? I suppose I want to get in¬ 
tellectual quality into my verse, and poetic, 
imaginative color into my fiction. Yet the 
things one does that are most worth doing 
often write themselves—so that when you come 
to analyze, and explain how and why, you’re 
utterly baffled.” 

Brent agreed. “True of almost all good 
work, even of an effective brief. An attorney 
needs imagination, too, though he may call it by 
some other name.” 

The room was shadowy, the fire soothing, and 
presently their talk dwindled; long silences 
were hard to break, and Diana was conscious 
of a marvelous physical content, faintly ruffled 
by a restlessness of the mind. 

She had heard of emotion stronger than one’s 
will, but it never had seemed real to her until 
now. That early love of hers had troubled and 
even tortured her, but it had never possessed 


DIANA 


283 


her in this way, twisting all her moral values. 
Now she found some advocate within herself re¬ 
minding her of all that Brent had missed, of the 
fact that he was close to middle age without 
having known the joy of youth, although he had 
possessed a wife and lost a child. She knew 
that she could give him all he craved, love in its 
most inclusive sense, and mental stimulus, un¬ 
derstanding. She knew what he was feeling at 
this moment, a joy dimmed by the consciousness 
of having missed his goal. A tremor ran 
through her again when he said: 

“Yet being miserable can’t be so hard when 
one has really possessed—when a man doesn’t 
feel that he’s been cheated of his heritage! If 
I had ever known true marriage, such as some 
people really have—my father and mother— 
Boblee’s parents—old Peter—” 

She stirred restlessly: 

“Yet perhaps having, and then losing, that 
way, is harder than you guess.” 

The words caught his imagination. Suppose 
that after this evening, this hour of unforget¬ 
table nearness, Diana were to die, as Kate Tom¬ 
lin had died? Suppose it were already over, 
this beautiful baffling relation? 

He moved toward her instinctively, and she 
rose to meet him, facing a sharp surprise in 
herself. For she found that his touch awoke in 
her no familiar feminine reluctance. Anything 
he might say or do would seem natural, right. 
Brent freed her abruptly, and turned away. 


284 FULFILLMENT 

Something in his face, some scorn of himself, 
hurt her. 

‘ ‘ Forgive me. I thought I could be trusted. ’ ’ 

She murmured unsteadily: “Of course you 
can, dear. We’re both just human.” 

He looked at her, his face burning. 

“Diana, do you mean that you see beauty in 
it, too? That you’d like to stay on here, to¬ 
night, alone?” 

She thought of his wife’s indifference to him 
with amazement, and then with anger that ran 
through her like fire. 

“Of course, Brent! Nothing stops us—ex¬ 
cept that foolish little sentiment called honor.” 

Like ice suddenly thawed by the sun his ten¬ 
sion snapped, and she too felt no longer keyed 
up to breaking point, but sane, rested. He 
said with a sigh, and a smile, too: 

11 1 can’t tell you what it means to me, having 
you feel so.” 

“But I don’t understand—” 

He hesitated, then said slowly: “Someone 
told me once, ‘There’s no use pretending I see 
anything beautiful in Nature. To me it’s all 
ugly.’ ” 

She understood now. “But Brent, how piti¬ 
ful ! That distrust of nature used to be bred in 
children,—especially girls—a sort of ignorant 
scorn of the body. ...” 

The gratitude in his eyes made her shiver a 
little. She thought how hurt pride must sting 


DIANA 285 

and ache, and had a queer desire to cry. She 
hurried on: 

“Why, missing the beauty of love is tragic 
—worse than being color blind or tone deaf. 
Think what the poor things lose—never to learn 
that miracles happen/ ’ 

Her eyes applied that miracle to themselves. 
At last Brent said reluctantly: 

“But we’ve got to drive down the mountain 
to-night, dear.” 

“Yes, Brent. And it’s time to go.” 

They went. When they reached the house in 
the village, Boblee welcomed Brent by flinging 
herself in his arms to the imminent peril of her 
broken collar bone. 

“Brent darling, I’ve missed you horribly! 
So has Diana, and everyone.” 

Brent laughed, but with the girl’s lips against 
his cheek he told himself that Diana made even 
his normal affections for other people more 
precious. Though he could not have explained 
why or how, the friendship between these two, 
the woman and the girl, deepened his own feel¬ 
ing for both. 


V 


It was ridiculous, .Boblee insisted. She 
wasn’t ill, and Dr. Ellery was a fussy old 
thing, a million times worse than Dr. Peter. 
Her collar bone was all healed up and she could 
climb mountains as well as any of them; she 
didn’t believe Diana and Brent wanted her! 
Also this spending half the day in bed was per¬ 
fectly absurd. 

She was so irritable and her usually bright 
color was so variable that Brent felt uneasy 
and Dr. Ellery’s jargon about red and white 
corpuscles hardly seemed to explain why Boblee 
should be sleeping badly and losing her temper 
at every little thing. Alone with Diana on the 
Ellery’s porch the next afternoon, Brent said: 

“Has she been hearing from Pat, do you 
think? Is the boy worrying her—insisting 
upon seeing her?” 

“No, I’m quite sure he hasn’t written for 
several weeks.” 

“Then what is it?” said Brent. “A touch 
of ansemia oughtn’t to make her so difficult—so 
unlike herself.” 

“I’ve been wondering, whether there’s any¬ 
thing worse—for a woman—than to have a man 
take her at her word.” 

Brent laughed, but objected that Boblee 
286 


DIANA 


287 


wasn’t a woman—that he didn’t believe she 
ever thought about Pat. If she did why had 
she been so gay, so content, ever since she had 
come to Vermont—where there were no boys of 
her own age, no Pat, nothing but open country, 
older people, and the camp. 

Diana smiled, and the smile made Brent feel 
himself an ignorant, prejudiced mere male—as 
he was. 

“Don’t look so superior, Diana. Tell me 
what you mean. ’ ’ 

“Only this: when she was hearing from Pat 
constantly, even though she wouldn’t answer 
his letters, she was apparently well and con¬ 
tent. Now that he seems to have lost interest, 
she not only needs a tonic but a cure for irrita¬ 
bility. Personally I wish Pat would walk in 
the door this minute! But he’s hundreds of 
miles away—surveying for Uncle Sam. ’ ’ 

Brent looked unconvinced, although im¬ 
pressed by her earnestness; and then Diana’s 
fresh face above a crisp pink gingham frock 
changed the current of his thoughts. He had 
seen her recently only in her knickerbockers 
and khaki shirt: this essentially feminine cos¬ 
tume teased him as coquetry might have done. 
They were alone; the village street was empty; 
he went closer to her and stood looking down at 
her dark bent head. 

“Diana, what actually happened last night? 
Did I dream you, and the camp, and the fire? 
Are you real?” 


288 


FULFILLMENT 


Her low laugh answered him. Her notebook 
slid from her knee to the floor. As he picked 
it up Brent lifted her hand and kissed her wrist. 
Then they heard Mrs. Ellery calling them to 
lunch. 


He stayed three days, and before he left Bob- 
lee was beginning to get pink again, and to eat 
her meals with more enthusiasm. One after¬ 
noon Ellery drove the three of them up to the 
camp for supper, and Diana and Brent had 
nearly two hours alone by the fire while the 
doctor took Boblee to see some young dogs at a 
farm house over the mountain. 

It was chilly for August, and they built a 
huge fire and sat close to the hearth. Diana 
wore not her khaki but a frock of white wool 
and a quaint sapphire brooch that had been her 
grandmother’s, and she looked younger than 
Brent had ever seen her. He said so, and from 
the deep low chair in which she lay she smiled 
at him. And then the realization that he must 
leave her—that he had no right in the world to 
claim her—that their paths were utterly sep¬ 
arated—seemed to turn things black, to empty 
life of every vestige of happiness or hope. 

‘ 4 Brent, why are you looking that way?” she 
cried. 

He said only: “To-morrow—” 

She gave a sigh, and then smiled at him, with 
her eyes, a musing, considering look. 


DIANA 


289 


“Dear, isn’t it worth some pain—all the 
hours we’ve had together, up here? Would 
you rather we’d never known—” 

He was beside her, rough, eager, holding 
both her hands against his face. “You know I 
wouldn’t—but to find you and then leave you— 
it’s a damnable thing—hideous, unbear¬ 
able. . . . To-night I feel that I can’t—that I 
won’t—” 

She did not withdraw, and he held her close. 
Presently he had a sensation like nothing he 
had known before, the feeling of Diana’s tears 
on his face. She was crying quietly, a changed, 
incredible Diana. Then she was laughing at 
herself. 

“Brent, I didn’t mean to—I’m a little hyster¬ 
ical fool—and I hate cry-babies just as much as 
Boblee does. I’m not sorry it’s all happened, 
either. I’m glad! But, oh, my dear, it’s so 
dreadful I can’t take care of you. You do 
need me so. . . .” 

“I do,” said Brent, and was utterly happy, 
just because of the salt taste of her tears on 
his lips. 

They sat silent, wordless, for a long time. 
Understanding made the place and the hour 
beautiful, and passion made it perilous. They 
both thought of the mystery of the woods out¬ 
side, remembered the loveliness of those moon¬ 
light nights when they had not been afraid, 
such a little while ago. They clung together, 
absurdly, for safety, and heard, still together, 


290 


FULFILLMENT 


that compelling call of the centuries, that old 
clear call that Life has answered since the 
beginning. 

Brent said at last: 

“Anyhow I ? ve had this much, Diana, you 
here, in my arms. Nothing can take that 
away.” 

“Nothing shall, dear. It can’t be happening 
again—but at least we can write, see each other 
occasionally. We won’t be feeling separated 
—all the time.” 

Before the others came back they kissed 
each other gravely, for good-by. Diana took 
Brent’s head between her hands: 

“Brent, you mustn’t look—so—I mean when 
they come.” 

“How mustn’t I look, you absurd woman?” 

“Oh, as if you were a boy again, listening to 
a fairy tale, with your eyes even bluer than 
they’re meant to be—and shining.” 

“I’ll change my eyes, if you insist—” 

“I’m so afraid you can’t, Brent. And Bob- 
lee ’s so keen. ’ ’ 

She was whimsical, gay, but she had re¬ 
ceded from the mood of utter intimacy of spirit 
and body so dangerously beautiful—to lovers. 
He had loved her for her mood of surrender, 
and now he loved her, inconsistently, for her re¬ 
covered ownership of herself. She threw a 
great armful of dry birch-bark on the fire, so 
that when Boblee and Ellery came back the low 


DIANA 


291 


ceiled room was gleaming and dancing in 
wavering golden light. 

Obedient to Diana’s admonition Brent tried 
not to let Boblee see bis eyes. But that im¬ 
pressionable young person was full of her 
visit, telling them about the puppies, clumsy, 
awkward and clamorous, and also about the 
puppies’ mistress, who bad two new babies, 
twins. 

“They were so red and bad such funny 
shrill little voices that I liked the puppies 
best,” she told Brent. But later on she said 
to Diana: 

“You know, they were really wonderful, 
Diana—so tiny and yet real! I never saw 
such young ones before—only three weeks 
old.” 

Despite the excitement of witnessing human 
and canine newness Boblee was extremely tired, 
and it was getting late, especially when one 
remembered bow early Brent’s train left in the 
morning. They drove back to the village in 
Ellery’s shabby capable car, and during the 
four miles no one spoke: only the brook, hurry¬ 
ing down the valley, crooned a wild lullaby, and 
the wind sighed in the tree tops as though 
Autumn were near. 


VI 


Home again, Brent was swiftly involved 
in legal and business complications. Frost 
was in Europe and Foley was ill at bis sum¬ 
mer place in Connecticut; so Brent found 
that there were any number of decisions for 
him to make. The office force, despite its ex¬ 
cellent organization, was more or less affected 
by the wave of terrific heat that submerged the 
city; but fortunately Miss Grail was back at her 
post, and between them they managed to get 
a great deal of work done. 

Then one morning when he had arrived late 
Miss Gail came in, looking worried. 

“Mr. Conway has called up several times, 
Mr. Appleton. He seems much upset about 
something; he is here now.’ 9 

“I thought he was in England ,’ 9 said Brent. 
“Send him in, of course.” 

Brent would hardly have known Conway. 
His fresh color was gone, in its place was a 
gray pallor; his eyes were unnaturally large 
and bright, and his face was so thin that the 
cheek bones stood out prominently. 

They shook hands but Conway said sharply: 

“You’ll be less enthusiastic about seeing me, 
Appleton, when I tell you that my plant’s in 

292 


DIANA 


293 


trouble and you stand to lose every penny you 
put into it. If any man had told me I could get 
into such an infernal snarl I’d have called him 
a damned liar.” 

Brent moved a chair for his guest, handed 
him a cigar, and settled himself to listen. His 
client’s tale was not reassuring. The English 
manufacturer who had made Conway’s goods 
for years had died recently, and in his place 
a half-baked son, inexperienced and greedy for 
profits, had refused to renew the contract which 
his father had made. Not only this, but 
through a technical flaw in the old contract the 
Englishman was holding up the goods already 
due in Conway’s warehouses, and American 
purchasers were taking their orders elsewhere. 
There were other complications which increased 
the danger of the situation; it seemed that Con¬ 
way’s margin of available capital had been 
greatly diminished by some investments which 
had turned out a total loss. Brent asked ques¬ 
tions and analyzed the situation carefully. He 
was cheerful and reassuring, so that his client 
went away in a more optimistic mood. 

Actually Brent thought of his investment 
with a sinking heart. Every difficult situation 
in life seems to be made more difficult by any 
financial coil. His anxiety to be more than just 
to Frances had resulted in a diminution of his 
own income beyond his original plan, so that 
the menace to his block of Conway stock seemed 
more serious now than it would have been a 


294 


FULFILLMENT 


year ago. But the manufacturer’s situation 
was far from hopeless, and Brent went to work 
on it with determination. The English law on 
the subject proved complicated, and he left the 
library of the Bar Association feeling dis¬ 
couraged and rather grimly impressed with the 
instability of life in general and of business 
in particular. 

Opening his door with his latchkey at mid¬ 
night Brent felt the rush of loneliness which 
assails the most cheerful and optimistic of 
mortals who face an empty house. But on the 
hall table he found a handful of letters, one of 
them in a handwriting he had only seen on 
letters addressed to Boblee. It was small, 
decisive, beautifully spaced, and yet with 
whimsical characteristics. He took it upstairs, 
deliberately saving it as, when a boy, he had 
hoarded some especially delectable treat. 
After his bath, when he felt rested and hopeful, 
he lay back against his pillows under the little 
reading lamp whereby he had read himself to 
sleep many a lonely night. That sort of lone¬ 
liness—solitude in an alien world—was done 
with, thank God. 

4 1 In Qamp Again. 

“ August 20th. 

“It’s late, the others are in bed, Mrs. Ellery and 
Boblee. I’m writing this beside the fire, on my lap. 
Outside it’s crisp, not really cold, but with the feel 
of October, so that it’s hard to picture people suffer¬ 
ing from heat near Madison Square. There’s no moon, 


DIANA 


295 


but the air is brilliantly clear, and the sky really 
is that color they call in the shops ‘ midnight blue.’ 
In the glitter of starlight the silver birches look 
slimmer and lighter than the other trees. Inside, the 
fire makes dancing shadows on the ceiling, as my 
lamp is out. I'm writing this by candle and fireglow. 

“Boblee has had a long letter from Pat—cool and 
friendly and full of facts and works—he’s surveying 
some timberland in Texas for Uncle Sam. She gave it 
to me to read and says she doesn’t think she’ll an¬ 
swer it, not now, anyhow. But her cheeks are redder 
since it came, she sleeps better, the way she used to 
sleep before she was ill. Even three days has made 
a difference. Which symptoms you may interpret as 
you will; personally I’m reassured about her, what¬ 
ever the cause of her improvement. 

“I’ve been outdoors again: it’s such a white night 
that one thinks of Northern Lights—a luminous sky 
with millions of tiny lamps making an incandescent 
glow. It’s as beautiful as when you were here—and 
I resent the beauty you cannot see. I’ve been hav¬ 
ing a hard time with my story, by the way—couldn’t 
write anything real, that any mortal would care to 
read— But to-day your letter came, and something 
happened, so that I’ve done the best work in weeks. 
Like Boblee I feel ‘more alive!’— 

“It’s after one, obviously Dr. Ellery won’t be here 
to-night. Brent, I’m glad we’ve had, together, all this 
untouched, unspoiled beauty. For me, now, memory 
colors everything, makes the fireglow lovelier and even 
the wild forest queerly human—Good night. 

“Diana.” 

It was a letter curiously different from his 
own closely written pages, in which he had 


296 


FULFILLMENT 


thrown legal caution to the winds and said 
things he had never before put on paper. But 
he was content, more than content, and he fell 
asleep and dreamed that he was back at the 
camp, beside the fire. 

The next morning brought him a note from 
Aline. She was at her apartment and wanted 
to see him. Would he come around that eve¬ 
ning? She had been ill, in trouble, she really 
needed him. Brent had a difficult day, but he 
telephoned that he would come, and at half 
past eight he was climbing her stair. He 
found it curiously baffling, the fact that six 
months ago he had gone to her in such an 
utterly different mood. 

The maid he knew opened the door. Mrs. 
Armstrong was not well, she was lying down, 
but she wanted to see Mr. Appleton. He could 
go right in. Brent went quickly through the 
small square foyer into the living room. 

She lay against a background of brilliant 
pillows, her loose hair bright and lovely, but 
her face looking small, and pinched. 

He bent over her, took both her hands. 

“Why, Aline, you’re ill. I didn’t know—” 

She looked up at him, unsmiling. In place 
of her gay assurance was something close to 
pathos. 

“It’s nothing—a summer cold with a touch of 
fever. But I haven’t been sleeping well; you 
know how that knocks you up. ’ ’ 


DIANA 


297 


Brent did know, and lie sat down in the easy 
chair by the conch, thinking for the first time 
that she was rather a lonely little person. He 
believed her to be loyal, in no sense promis¬ 
cuous, yet he had sometimes felt in her an 
evanescent ardor, a suggestion of half-cynical 
laughter at life. She was too world-wise to be 
surprised or shocked at change: he told him¬ 
self that, to her, love would always mean more 
the zest and sparkle of adventure than the 
steady glow of endurance. So it seemed to 
him now that she sensed the difference in him, 
and acquiesced. Perhaps because of this inner 
reassurance, he was soon talking to her as 
he had never talked before. She said: 

“You're not looking well yourself, Brent. 
What is it f Anything wrong at the office ? 9 9 

He found it easy to tell her—of course with¬ 
out names—the tale of Conway's success, of 
his own investment, and now of the dangerous 
position of the manufacturer and of the chance 
that he himself might lose the savings of years. 
She was interested, sympathetic; she asked 
intelligent questions; and Brent found that in¬ 
stead of a difficult evening he was really 
comforted by their talk and the excellent cigar 
which the maid brought him when Aline touched 
a silver bell by her side. 

“Where on earth do you get cigars like 
these?" he asked. “The things most women 
buy for men—" 


298 


FULFILLMENT 


Aline’s laugh was like the Aline he knew best, 
amused, a little mysterious, with a flavor of 
feminine malice. 

14 Never mind where I get them, Brent! I’ve 
had time enough lately to cultivate a new set of 
friends, unlike any you’ve met, all sorts of 
queer people. When you didn’t come to my 
hilltop I consoled myself with several house 
parties—the first week-end I had Cunningham 
and Frances’s friend, Mrs. VanCleve Porter, 
by way of a sop to Mrs. Grundy. But who the 
others were you shall never know.” 

Brent laughed, more and more conscious of 
relief. He stayed until eleven o ’clock; the 
maid, who seemed to be sleeping in the apart¬ 
ment, brought them cool drinks in crystal 
goblets: “Cunningham’s liquor” said Aline. 
11 He’s always generous. ’ ’ 

Brent looked at her with a touch of curiosity. 

“That man’s in love with you, Aline. 
And he’s persistent, successful. I sometimes 
wonder— ’ ’ 

“You needn’t,” said Aline rather shortly. 
“He’s fifty-six years old. He’s been divorced 
twice. As a husband he’d be . . .” 

A petulant shrug finished her sentence, and 
Brent had a moment of discomfort. Would she 
refer to their past, to the possibility of the 
divorce? Was that idea back in her mind all 
the time? 

Then she did a very little thing, reassuring, 
though he could not have said why. When he 


DIANA 


299 


put out his hand to say good-by she smiled up 
at him, and told him that he had done her 
good. He noticed that to-night her curved lips 
were pale pink, not vivid red. She said lightly: 

“Kiss me good night, old Brent.’’ 

He leaned down and kissed her, and their kiss 
was calm, friendly, affectionate. He went away 
feeling pleased, and wholly unemotional, con¬ 
scious that he had never liked her so much. 
He had made her promise to call in Tomlin if 
she did not mend quickly, and she had agreed 
meekly, though she added: “Of course your 
Peter Tomlin doesn’t like me. But then he 
doesn’t like Frances any better. He’s a bit of 
a misogynist, isn’t he?” 

An hour later Brent turned in with a com¬ 
fortable feeling that he had been rather pes¬ 
simistic of late. Things weren’t so bad, after 
all. A man’s past follies need not be eternally 
tied about his neck: now and then one might 
escape penalties. . . . 


VII 


September found Boblee back in town, a 
taller, thinner, more mature Boblee, who sat 
at the head of Brent’s table with a little air 
of housewifely arrogance that pleased and 
amused him. 

She complained that the house was musty, 
that the maids had grown careless, that they 
stupidly considered her too young to notice 
the dust in corners. But she would soon set 
that matter straight: Brent should see! She 
told him also that it made her furious the way 
Diana dropped her just as soon as they left 
the camp, becoming so busy with school work 
and her writing that she could not be lured 
down to Eleventh Street for dinner! Brent 
heard these fulminations with a blend of amuse¬ 
ment and sympathy. Coming home to a warm 
bright house presided over by a young person 
nearly as tall as himself, with an air of 
competence and general omniscience, was agree¬ 
able if bewildering. And hearing constantly 
of Diana—her work, her friends, her having 
just sold two stories to an excellent magazine— 
all this was as refreshing as autumn winds 
after arid summer. 

And then one Saturday afternoon he was 

300 


DIANA 


301 


home early, planning to put in an hour of unin¬ 
terrupted writing, when the library door burst 
open and Boblee sprang into the room. 

“Brent—Brent, I want you!” 

He looked up from his desk at the girl stand¬ 
ing in the doorway, no longer sophisticated and 
serene, but flushed, excited, and it even seemed 
to him, alarmed. 

“He’s downstairs. Oh, Brent, I want you to 
see him for me—send him away—tell him I 
can’t see him. ...” 

“Can’t see whom?” Brent asked stupidly, 
but she was beside him, her arms around his 
neck, her cheek against his: 

“Brent, I don’t want to see him—and Josie 
has let him in. ’ ’ 

At this point the door which Boblee had 
closed opened quietly, and Pat stood looking at 
them, a tall, lean Pat dressed in a well-cut suit 
of gray homespun, a personable and excessively 
sunburned young man. 

“Hope you don’t mind my running up— 
making myself at home—Mr. Appleton.” 

Brent was astonished at the metamorpho¬ 
sis of Boblee. All her nervous fright had 
disappeared; she was sedate, gracious, the 
mistress of the house. 

“Why, Pat, how fit you look! Tanned like 
an Indian—it’s corking to see you! ’ ’ 

Under his surface bravado Pat was as 
surprised as Brent, but from that moment 
things went as smoothly as though Pat and 


302 


FULFILLMENT 


Boblee had met every day of those four long 
months. Brent asked him to dinner, and 
Boblee seconded the invitation with dignity, 
and went gravely downstairs to give her orders 
to the cook. At the table, later on, the two 
men talked and smoked, and Boblee wore a 
new frock, looking extremely handsome. At 
last Brent excused himself to go on with the 
work they had interrupted—but he thought he 
would be obliged to go down to the library of 
the Bar Association after all, as he needed a 
particular book of reference. And Pat and 
Boblee had better sit by his fire, as it was chilly 
and the chimney didn’t draw well downstairs. 
Whereupon the three had coffee in the library, 
and Brent departed. 

Pat was curiously embarrassed. The gay 
little girl he had loved seemed to have dis¬ 
appeared: instead here was a woman, grave, 
self-contained, apparently not five months but 
five years older than the Boblee he had known. 
And then, to his consternation, she was slumped 
low in Brent’s huge armchair, her face turned 
away from him. He could hear her strangled 
crying, and after a moment of awed contempla¬ 
tion of that bent head he was on his knees, his 
arm flung about her shoulders. 

“No, no. Don’t touch me I . . 

“Boblee, oh Boblee,—darling,—don’t cry! 
Please!” 

But he could not stop her, she could not 
stop herself, and Pat waited until that pas- 


DIANA 303 

sionate, aloof, half hysterical sobbing was 
spent. 

She was telling him at last the story she had 
told no one else since that March day, the story 
of the evening at the restaurant with Aline’s 
friends, of the drive, and the drunken love- 
making of the man whom Boblee had trusted. 
Pat listened with thin lips and taut muscles but 
at last he asked the inevitable question: 

“I see why you haven’t talked to your uncle, 
or to Miss Marlowe—after your promise to Mrs. 
Armstrong. But Boblee, why have you pun¬ 
ished me? What have I done?” 

She laughed and winked her wet lashes: 

i ‘ I wasn’t punishing you, Pat. I was punish¬ 
ing myself! ’ 9 

“But in the name of the Prophet, why?” 

She sat up straight, staring into the fire. 

“Pat, do you remember that day in the park, 
and on the bus afterward? The first time you 
—said things.” 

“Yes, of course.” 

“After that didn’t you feel—I mean didn’t 
you know—?” 

“I felt and knew I meant to marry you, Bob¬ 
lee—that I loved you, wanted you, was plan¬ 
ning my life with the hope of becoming the sort 
of man you ought to marry—” 

“That was it, Pat! I knew the way you 
felt. And I wanted it too—I felt that I be¬ 
longed to you. When the girls at school talked 
about the boys they knew, and the dances they 


304 


FULFILLMENT 


went to, and the silly things they did, I kept 
quiet. I said to myself that they were awfully 
soggy and cheap —letting first one boy kiss 
them, and then another. Oh, I was terribly 
superior. . . .” 

Pat ventured to touch her hand. ‘ ‘ Of course 
you were, Bob darling.’’ 

“But I wasn’t, really! That man—he was 
handsome, and older, and I was flattered, Pat! 
I let him kiss my hand—I liked his kissing it— 
even when I knew that I belonged to you.” 

“But silly dear, that wasn’t a crime.” 

“No, Pat. Not a crime. But cheap—like 
the other girls, only worse, because I had you. 
And then, when he was so awful—and after¬ 
ward, when I saw the blood on his face—oh, 
I felt I never could care for any man again! 
Suddenly everything was hideous—men—things 
they wanted, and tried to take. ...” 

She stopped speaking, and Pat was silent, 
not knowing what to say. He wanted to ask 
the name of that—beast. But at the moment 
he dared not ask anything she was not freely 
telling him. After a little she went on: 

“That day of the storm, in the park, I was 
afraid of men, all of them, even you and Brent. 
Aunt Frances had said that they were all alike. 
The man in the taxi had seemed wonderful at 
first, until I found him out. . . . All the time 
I was ill I had awful dreams—and even when I 
got better, though I couldn’t talk about what 


DIANA 


305 


had happened because I’d promised Mr$. Arm¬ 
strong, I kept thinking about it all the time. 
And I couldn’t feel sure even about you and 
Brent. Pat, it was worse than dying! ’ 9 
“Yes, you poor baby, I can see — 99 
“And then, when I was better, Brent took 
me away, to the mountains. He was so dear, 
and they were so big and quiet. And the 
Ellerys—I saw the way they belonged to each 
other, funny and old and yet still caring. I 
tried to forget everything—just be the baby 
Uncle Brent always thought me. But when 
Diana came she kept trying to make me talk, 
only I couldn’t. She told me how she felt about 
things—people and life. You see, she’s not 
like Aunt Frances, Pat. She thinks it’s all 
right, men and women—caring. She believes 
in men, too, so that when she talked I got to 
feeling that that man was different—not like 
Peter or Brent at all. And still I kept remem¬ 
bering that it had been partly my fault, that 
probably Aunt Frances was right about women 
being able to manage men, if they wanted to! 
So it seemed sort of decent to save you from the 
kind of girl I was afraid I must be—” 

The boy sprang up, but she put out her hand! 
“No, Pat. Don’t, please. Just let me tell 
you—get it all out, for once. Of course all the 
time I knew I was a little crazy, exaggerating 
things. But I didn’t want to see you, I wanted 
to know myself, to find out whether I was that 


306 


FULFILLMENT 


sort of girl, tlte kind lie wanted me to be. And 
the way to keep from giving in to you, Pat, was 
not to have you around!” 

Pat sighed with relief. “Glad you got that 
straight, anyway.” 

‘ ‘ Oh, I did, I do still.’’ 

“Well then — 99 

But her voice was shy and touched with a 
sadness that hurt him. 

“Pat, I’m not sure—oh, I do trust you. But 
sometimes I think I’m still poisoned.” 

She was trembling, but she finished in a low 
voice: 

“Diana’s wonderful. She helped more than 
any one. For she’s nearly thirty, and still she 
believes in things—not only in work for every¬ 
body, but in love too—that it can be like Shel¬ 
ley, and Kipling’s Brushwood Boy. And yet— 
Pat, I’m so afraid that it’s all spoiled—that 
things will never again seem right, beautiful, 
as they would have been if I’d never—if he’d 
never—” 

The room was still and he was conscious that 
his eyelids burned, as though he had been cry¬ 
ing too. She was so honest, still such a child, 
and yet she had been hurt as women are hurt. 
He felt a flare of rage against “that damn 
brute,” then put his anger by. It must wait. 
He got to his feet, tramping up and down the 
long rug; finally he brought a chair and sat 
down near her yet not touching her. 

“Darling, what’s happened is that instead of 


DIANA 


307 


it’s all coming gradually and peacefully you 
grew up in an hour! It w T as a ghastly ex¬ 
perience. I do see that. But Boblee, the feel¬ 
ing between us has always been real, and clean, 
splendid. It had already happened, too—had 
become part of our lives. So nothing outside— 
no accident of a drunken brute—could possibly 
change us! Don’t you see, dear?” 

She sat very still and Pat held his breath. 
He thought of those tiresome obsessions and 
twists about which one heard so much, lately, 
and often brought about by just such shocks as 
the girl had experienced. Facing this problem 
was crucial—everything in their future might 
hang on just what he said or did now—or upon 
what he did not say. When he spoke again his 
voice was cool and level. 

“I want to tell you one thing more, Boblee. 
Of course I’m only a man, like all the rest, but 
I love you! There’s nobody else for me—I’m 
made so I think there never could be. But I’d 
rather never marry you, never even see you 
again, than hurt you—or take one thing you 
didn’t most awfully want to give! Love’s like 
that, darling, real love. I swear it, Boblee!” 

The fire snapped and sparkled, but she still 
sat with her face averted, and it seemed to him 
a dreary lifetime before she stirred or spoke. 
At last she turned her head and lifted her face 
and he saw that it was still pale but that her 
eyes were shining through a blur of bright 
tears. 


308 


FULFILLMENT 


“Pat, dear old Pat, I know things you say are 
true—must he true. And perhaps—after a 
while—it won’t matter, all that—ugliness. Oh, 
I won’t let it matter—nothing shall—except 
that you are back and that we do—belong. ’ ’ 

He went to her then, and she kissed him of 
her own accord, as she had done that day above 
the river—the kiss Aunt Frances had s&en. He 
held her gently, feeling wise and ancient and 
responsible. In the deep, humorous crannies 
of his being he was supremely thankful—to 
somebody—Fate, or Ood, or it might be that 
queer old bird, Freud! 

For Pat was sure, now, that somehow the 
most mysterious and beautiful of all human ex¬ 
periences, unspoiled first love, was theirs to 
hold and cherish. 


Yet all that week Pat went about the 
business of living with a bewildered sense 
of disappointment. He knew that he ought 
to be satisfied, utterly happy, for Brent 
had agreed that they might as well call 
it an engagement, although he wished it under¬ 
stood that schoolgirls of barely eighteen did 
not get married, it simply wasn’t done! But 
in time, when she was older, through school, 
and Pat in a position to support a wife. . . . 
Brent managed to corral the usual platitudes 
and to seem sufficiently discreet and avuncular. 
He really did it well, considering his secret 


DIANA 


309 


sympathy for those young things ever since 
that first evening of Pat’s return, when he had 
come home from the law library to find them 
sitting hand in hand beside his fire. Their 
faces had been so luminous and beautiful that 
he had been carried back to that brief moment 
of his own youth. Then, in clear light, he had 
seemed to see Diana’s face—and had known 
sharp envy for the boy and girl, envy of their 
supposed freedom from all perplexities and 
entanglements. 

After the first swift recognition of the depth 
and reality of their feeling, playing the part of 
stern and practical guardian was one of the 
most difficult bits of acting he had ever 
achieved, and he was secretly proud of his 
success. For his initial impulse had been to 
marry them out of hand! 

But Pat was not proud of himself. On the 
contrary he was reluctantly aware of the fact 
that he could not think of the future, of his 
work, even properly and joyously of Boblee, 
because of one nagging obsessing idea. He 
wanted to know who the man was—that un¬ 
known individual whom she had liked and ad¬ 
mired at first, and whom she now remembered 
with such unchildlike shrinking. She had said: 
“I don’t want to talk about him, Pat. No, I 
can’t tell you his name. I want to forget it— 
and him.” 

But Pat couldn’t forget, that was his trouble. 
Instead he did a little sleuthing on his own 


310 


FULFILLMENT 


account, but when he mentioned several names 
of men acquaintances of Frances Appleton and 
of Mrs. Armstrong in the girl’s hearing her 
indifference was convincing. Well, he was 
probably a fool to care so absurdly, not to let 
sleeping dogs lie. But these obsessions could 
be all that the psychoanalysts proclaimed them, 
keeping your thoughts forever going around 
and around, like some poor little animal in a 
revolving cage. No wonder Boblee had been 
ill—he was feeling a little ill himself. He tried 
to shake the whole thing from his mind, and 
then found himself waking up in the night, after 
dreaming of sinister faces that stared at Boblee, 
threatened her, frightened her! 

One afternoon they went for a walk just as 
dusk drooped over the city and lights bloomed 
in a million windows. They had an hour to¬ 
gether before dinner, and in the crisp Autumn 
twilight they loitered along the Avenue, paus¬ 
ing now and then before a shop window, gay 
with color or alluring with a display of books 
that suggested Christmas, barely six weeks 
away. 

Boblee was as gay as the windows: she had 
her old color again, and in her brown fur- 
trimmed coat and little henna hat she was so 
splendid that people were constantly turning 
to look at her, which attention she never seemed 
to notice. ‘‘Used to it” thought Pat with 
pride, and then he had a consciousness of still 
deeper pride. “They see only her bigness, her 


DIANA 


311 


gorgeous hair, the color in her cheeks and lips,” 
he told himself. “But they don’t know how 
glorious she is; lots of girls are handsome, but 
little sleek cats under their frills and paint. 
Boblee’s all she looks—big and square and 
beautiful, and with a corking fine brain under 
her wads of hair!” 

It was at this moment that Boblee said, star¬ 
ing into the show window of a magnificent book 
shop: 

“Pat, I want to give Diana a whole set of 
Conrad. She’s crazy about him—and hasn’t 
anything but—” 

Her voice, clear and with a carrying note, 
caught the ear of a couple a little ahead of 
them. The woman turned, came back. 

“Why Roberta Appleton! I haven’t seen 
you since last winter, before you were ill. You 
don’t look as though you’d ever heard of a 
trained nurse.” 

Boblee smiled, and introduced Pat to “one 
of Aunt Frances’ friends.” 

“The last time I saw you was at your Aunt 
Frances’ dinner party—when Mrs. Armstrong 
sang and you wore your first evening frock. 
You were splendid, my dear, and somebody else 
thought so too! All that evening that hand¬ 
some Warner McKim couldn’t take his eyes 
off you!—But my husband’s escaping—I must 
run.” 

Suddenly Pat felt extremely guilty. He had 
seen a bright color stain Boblee’s cheek, 


312 


FULFILLMENT 


and had watched the blush fade, leaving the 
girl for a moment so white that he was fright¬ 
ened. But she walked steadily enough, and 
Pat talked nervously, about anything and noth¬ 
ing. Yet his pulses sang: luck was with him. 
Warner McKim was surely the man, and the 
very fact that Boblee had never spoken his 
name in Pat’s hearing confirmed his hunch. 

The next steps were easy, for the social reg¬ 
ister yielded the names of McKim’s parents, of 
his apartment house, and of his clubs, and Pat 
discovered that he and McKim had half a dozen 
mutual acquaintances. He matured his plans 
carefully—Pat was employed at this time on 
subway construction, and boarding in town; 
so one afternoon he got off early, and deliber¬ 
ately put on his riding clothes, ostensibly for 
a gallop in the park. Crop in hand he walked 
to McKim’s apartment house. And then, as he 
stood waiting for the ornate elevator in the 
huge marble hall, he remembered his promise 
to Diana. 

She had been right: making promises and 
taking other people’s advice was a hateful busi¬ 
ness. Yet the promise stood, just the same. 
He went to a telephone booth and called her 
number, but nobody answered. Pat was in a 
rage with himself, and with Diana also, if the 
truth were told. He ate a hurried early dinner 
and went to her apartment; she was evidently 
home now, as the door clicked in answer to 
his ring. 


DIANA 


313 


In her sitting room he found her almost 
buried under pages of manuscript: she was 
copying the novelette she had been writing for 
several months, and she looked tired and 
curiously excited, " as though writing fiction 
might be as engrossing as subway construction! 
And still she appeared really glad to see him. 

“Pat—I’ve been so happy about you and 
Boblee. I knew it must pan out right, in the 
end—and yet I was afraid—until I saw Bob- 
lee’s face one morning!—” 

It was difficult to keep his bloodthirsty mood 
in the face of such kindness, but presently he 
was deep in his story. He told her of his dis¬ 
covery, and of certain unsavory facts he had 
unearthed concerning Warner McKim’s rec¬ 
ord. His history, as related to women, at least, 
had a certain Don Juan flavor, or perhaps it 
belonged to the type of still earlier amatory ad¬ 
venturers, like the heroes of Fielding and Rich¬ 
ardson. “Anyway he’s a rotter,” said Pat 
with the spiritual arrogance of the young. 
“And though he’s quite as tall as I am, and 
heavier, he’s a bit soft. I can give him a 
thorough hiding I know—and when it’s over I 
shall feel a damned sight better.” 

Diana wore her camp khaki as a working 
costume, and she was lying back in a low chair 
with a cigarette in her hand. Her eyes looked 
interested and her cheeks grew pinker as Pat 
talked, and then she took away his breath by 
a simple remark, calmly uttered: 


314 


FULFILLMENT 


‘ ‘Do you know, Pat, youVe got a neat little 
phobia of your own—I’ve forgotten what they 
call it, but it’s an obsession—a mania to hurt 
people, to make them suffer. I should say that 
it was quite as abnormal, speaking medically, 
as Boblee’s recent reaction—or even as the 
man’s original offense!” 

Pat flushed painfully. The memory of his 
mental mood for months, of his repressed 
curiosity concerning the identity of Boblee’s 
acquaintance, and of his itch to use his riding 
whip on the person of Warner McKim—all 
these details recurred to his mind even as he 
dropped one of Diana’s cigarettes as though 
he had burnt his fingers. 

“I am sorry you feel that way about it,” he 
said stiffly, and turned to go. 

But Diana was beside him, her arm around 
his shoulders. 

“Pat, dear, you’ve got to stay and fight it 
out—with me. Please, Pat. And we’ll turn 
an honest-to-God searchlight on the whole 
situation. And then, if you’re still uncon¬ 
vinced, I’ll give in, and help your father to 
bail you out of jail when you’ve licked your 
man. ’ ’ 

They talked for two hours, Pat pouring out 
his accumulated spleen of months and Diana 
listening with a queer almost impish sympathy 
that surprised herself. But one thing she said 
particularly impressed him; there was a ring 
of authority and conviction in her voice which 


DIANA 315 

arrested his attention, turned his thoughts into 
a fresh channel. 

‘ 1 After all, Pat, if McKim upset Boblee for 
a while he never could have done it without 
an earlier influence at work. Mrs. Appleton’s 
attitude, things she said to Boblee, twisted 
views about life that she, in her turn, got from 
someone else—don’t you see how her influence 
must inevitably make trouble with a sensitive 
young girl? And you can’t very well horse¬ 
whip Frances Appleton. ’ ’ 

They sat and smoked for some time after 
this, and then Diana began to pick up manu¬ 
script and straighten her room. Her little 
French clock struck midnight and she went to 
see that it was right by the tower clock. When 
she turned from the window Pat was beside her, 
his arm around her in a firm bear hug, his face 
pale but curiously peaceful. 

4 ‘I’ll say you’re some little pacifist, Diana 
Marlowe! I think your morals are mixed—if 
you pity everybody, and trace all the rotten 
things they do back to somebody else’s influ¬ 
ence, you’ll be disbanding the police force and 
bringing chaos back again! But this psycho¬ 
analysis stuff has its good points. I really 
hadn’t seen how much Mrs. Appleton had mud¬ 
dled things, with Boblee. And I’m darned glad 
the kid had you to come to, when she was down 
and out.” 

Diana laughed, although she was so tired 
that she ached in every muscle. It had been a 


316 


FULFILLMENT 


hard battle, but for once mental conviction and 
some consideration of ethical values had not 
been over-ridden by brute force. And the fact 
that Pat could be reached by some influence 
subtler than the impulse for retaliation gave 
her a feeling of increased confidence as to Bob- 
lee's future. 


VIII 


Brent was genuinely glad of the youth 
and laughter that filled the Eleventh Street 
house, giving him the illusion of having 
rediscovered the country where nothing is 
spoiled or furtive, and where the one thing 
that supremely matters is that precious pa¬ 
thetic obsession called love. 

He was glad for them and ashamed of his 
growing envy. For those two, straight sailing, 
no hidden reefs, no insurmountable obstacles 
or damnable blunders! Like many older per¬ 
sons he really knew amazingly little of the 
young people so near that their lives seemed 
to him an open book: concerning the details of 
Boblee’s experience in the taxicab, her months 
of mental suffering and Pat’s private confer¬ 
ence with Diana, he knew nothing. But at least 
he no longer envied the young ones their power 
to love. Diana had convinced him that his own 
capacity was limitless. Yet it seemed to him 
that, whichever way he turned, every obstacle 
that could possibly separate a man from his de¬ 
sire blocked his path. 

He had written to Frances several times on 
business, and in one letter he had told her that 
he hoped she would change her mind concern- 
317 


318 


FULFILLMENT 


ing the matter of a divorce. He had assured 
her again that the house in Eleventh Street was 
hers, to live in or sell, as she pleased. Her 
few notes in reply had been courteous, appreci¬ 
ative of his financial arrangements, and abso¬ 
lutely mute upon the whole subject of the 
future. 

This silence of hers might not have been so 
discouraging—after all, he had known Frances’ 
attitude and her characteristic obstinacy. 
What troubled him far more was the fact that 
he was seeing nothing of Diana and a great deal 
of Aline. Not that Aline was insistent or 
openly possessive. But some legal affairs of 
hers were in a tangle—she had recently inher¬ 
ited a little property about which there was 
some litigation, and she had quite naturally 
brought her business to Brent’s office. She was 
better off financially than he had realized, 
and surprisingly adequate, when it came to 
investments and the management of her in¬ 
terests. 

However Brent realized that she did not look 
well: always slight, she had become thin, and 
very pale. He suggested that she get regular 
meals and enough sleep, tried to look after her 
in little friendly ways—-and then found himself 
in a mesh of engagements which included them 
both—little dinners given by people they both 
knew, the theater, now and then a meal at her 
apartment. Always Brent was reminded of 
her popularity, of the compliment she paid him 


DIANA 


319 


of preferring his society to the more insistent 
attentions of several other men. Brent tried 
to show her, decently, that he was, or wished 
to be, out of the running, save as her friend; 
but there was something curious about the way 
that all they had been to each other last year 
persistently colored their relation now. It was 
past: Brent told himself that the idea that he 
owed Aline marriage was a sentimental throw¬ 
back ; a modem man does not marry one woman 
when another, young and free, has all his 
thought and all his devotion. And yet he 
seemed caught in a mesh of duty and habit 
from which he could not free himself without 
an ugly break. 

Since at present he could not marry anyone, 
it seemed absurd to put the situation into banal 
words, particularly as Aline was acquiescing in 
the propriety of their present relation. But 
she said to him one day: 

“It’s strange, Brent—the way last year has 
spoiled other men for me. I used to take a 
vampish joy in being made love to—now I find 
myself avoiding tete-a-tetes. ... Of course it ’s 
silly of me, considering how uncertain things 
are—I mean our future.” 

Brent had considered the possibility of tell¬ 
ing her that evening about Diana—of making 
a clean breast of the whole difficult situation. 
But looking at this altered Aline, pale, rather 
quiet, with her bright head a little bent and 
pensive, he could only say: 


320 


FULFILLMENT 


“Yes, Aline. It is foolish. I advise you to 
forget all about last year.” 

She looked at him quickly, then her eyes were 
veiled, her profile turned toward him. 

“If I only could, Brent. ...” 

He left her with a bewildered feeling that 
somehow, without his having said a word, their 
intimacy had become, not vague and shadowy 
as he had wished to make it, but more defined: 

That same evening he saw Diana. Pat and 
Boblee had dined with her, but Pat had a busi¬ 
ness engagement after dinner and Boblee had 
asked Brent to call for her. So he left Aline 
at ten, and presently Diana opened the door 
for him. 

In a straight thin frock of gold colored silk, 
with her dark curling hair and her beautiful 
bare shoulders, she was handsomer than he had 
ever seen her, looking taller in her scant, rather 
long draperies. She reminded him of a picture 
he had seen of Lorna Doone, and he wished 
that he were more like John Ridd—primi¬ 
tive, one-ideaed, with the strength that belongs 
to elemental forces and natures. 

She said: “It turned out that Pat didn’t 
have to go, after all. And they had tickets 
for the opera. So they left after dinner.” 

She still stood on the threshold, as though 
assuming that he was not coming in, but Brent 
put his hands on her shoulders, moved her 
aside and closed the door after him. Then he 
took her in his arms. 


DIANA 


321 


4 ‘Say you're glad to see me, Diana." 

She clung to him for an instant, then he 
found a chair, and drew her to him, holding her 
close, her head against his breast, as they had 
sat the last night at the camp. It almost 
seemed to Brent that once again the woods 
enfolded them, that the fresh breeze from the 
partly opened window was blowing over pine 
trees and a wild brook. At last, without try¬ 
ing to free herself, Diana said, with a little 
sigh: 

“I'm afraid, Brent—" 

“What of, my darling!" 

“Not of anything that could happen—or of 
anything other people might do or say. But 
of hurting it —the one thing that matters!' 9 

“You mean—what do you mean, Diana?" 

She was free of his arm now, and sat with 
her hands clasped over her knee, staring 
straight at her namesake on the smaller tower. 
Brent saw her profile, the outline of her broad 
forehead, curved nostrils and strong chin, with 
that long lovely sweep from chin to ear. He 
realized with a strange pang how much deeper 
his desire went than mere possession of her 
physical self, that what he wanted to win and 
hold fast was her very spirit! Yet would he 
ever really know her? Was not her strongest 
appeal to his imagination? 

“It's the finest thing that's ever happened 
to either of us, Brent. And it's up to us to 
keep it—untarnished." 


322 


FULFILLMENT 


He let her go, and began to pace the room. 
It was long before either of them spoke again. 
Then Diana said almost fiercely: 

4 4 It’s my fault. If I’d just been satisfied to 
feel, and know, yet say nothing! All this talk 
about the 4 danger of repression’ is only our 
modern way of getting what we want! ’ ’ 

44 But we’re not getting it,” said Brent 
roughly. 4 4 And the Lord knows neither of us 
sought this thing. It came—out of space! 
Yet sometimes I feel that finding you is the one 
thing that makes life endurable.” 

Her mood changed. In a flash she was chal¬ 
lenging him, laughing at him. 

44 Brent, that’s abject nonsense! You have 
your work, and for all your grumbling you care 
for it enormously, for your office—all the tan¬ 
gles you’re perpetually unraveling for other 
people—even your dull briefs! You hate 
the drudgery—but everybody hates drudgery! 
And the routine gets on your nerves—but rou¬ 
tine gets on everybody’s nerves. I know, for I 
teach. Besides your work you have Boblee— 
she and Pat are so happy that they shed it all 
over you—like puppies in a hayloft, or wild 
youngsters at a wedding, scattering confetti 
over the universe! ’ ’ 

Brent laughed, unwillingly. It was true: he 
had been conscious of the straw sticking to him . , 
or the confetti. She added seriously: 

44 Can’t we just cut out other things, be con¬ 
tent with friendship 1 Aren’t we big enough ? ’ ’ 


DIANA 323 

At the moment Brent almost felt that they 
were, yet he said: 

“But when I’m free—” 

She looked at him with those clear eyes and 
he knew that she was not thinking of Frances. 
He added: “Really free, I mean,” and she 
added: 

“I’ll be here, Brent. I’m not the kind that 
changes easily. But now I’m going to ask you 
not to write as you’ve been doing. They were 
wonderful letters. I loved them. But I’ve 
burnt every one. Some accident might have 
happened—they might have been used against 
you. . . .” 

As a lawyer he recognized his own folly and 
her wisdom, but he said: 

“Aren’t we to see each other sometimes, 
Diana f ’ ’ 

“Perhaps, now and then. With Pat or Bob- 
lee. But not this way.” 

Brent exhibited a bullying male authority. 

“Yet you’re glad this happened, glad I came 
to-night ? Say it! ” 

She laughed, and then a flaming blush satis¬ 
fied his egoism. 

When he left her at last he walked home, 
down the gleaming deserted Avenue. The de¬ 
pression that had seized him when with Aline 
had lightened. He felt strong again to combat 
those complex, subtle influences which mold 
men’s destinies against their will. The books 
were not closed yet. Surely, without his inter- 


324 


FULFILLMENT 


vention, Aline would realize how his attitude 
toward her had changed; she must sense it in 
time, and her pride would release him. To¬ 
night he thought of both Frances and Aline 
with regret, but without that anxiety and that 
fear of finalities which had weighed upon him 
so heavily. As in the old Greek myth, in the 
story of Antaeus and his Mother Earth, merely 
touching Diana had meant fresh hope and 
vigor, springing from mysterious sources of 
personality. 


It was later, on a December afternoon, that 
Brent, sitting at his office desk, opened rather 
absently an official envelope. After the first 
careless glance he read the document with ab¬ 
sorbed attention. It was commonplace enough, 
hut it changed the day for him and hurried 
him to Tomlin’s office before dinner. 

“In the name of Heaven what’s happened?” 
said Peter. “You look as though you’d been 
mixed up in a bomb explosion.” 

Brent laughed, and smoothed his rather 
ruffled hair and tie. He handed his friend the 
paper which contained such a thicket of legal 
verbiage that it took Peter some time to extract 
the hidden root of meaning. He gathered 
finally that certain American lawyers in Paris 
were informing Brent Appleton, Esq., that he 
was being sued for divorce by one Frances Ap¬ 
pleton, and that—but the Doctor refused to be 


DIANA 


325 


sidetracked by further details. Leaning for¬ 
ward he gave Brent’s shoulder a mighty 
thump: 

4 ‘Good work, old man! By the Lord Harry 
she’s behaving herself at last. Judging by this 
date the letter has been delayed, so that in— 
what is it, two months, or three?—you’ll be 
your own master?” 

Brent was glad to be patted or even thumped. 
He felt like a dog who has found a haven after 
an earthquake. Yet he was still dazed. 

“But Frances has said nothing of this in her 
business letters. I hadn’t an inkling that she’d 
changed.” 

“What does it matter? You are getting 
what you want.” And then Peter added, in a 
more analytical and thoughtful tone: “Ten 
to one she’s decided to make some other man 
miserable. I told you she’d marry again!” 

Brent laughed. “There’s some mysterious 
motive underlying* her action, Peter. But I 
don’t believe it’s matrimony!” 

“Oh, very well,” said Tomlin. “We’ll 
know in time! But I tell you that even to the 
feminine iceberg mere man may be useful. At 
any rate this lets you out. ’ ’ 

Yet Tomlin thought that Brent hardly looked 
like a man happy in the prospect of freedom, 
long deferred. 

Brent wanted the Doctor to go home with 
him, to keep him in countenance at dinner, fac¬ 
ing those ridiculous young things, Boblee and 


326 


FULFILLMENT 


Pat. Their capacity for sustained ecstasy was 
a little wearing to contemplate without the 
presence of another protecting and unecstatic 
adult. 

Unfortunately Tomlin had an engagement, 
and with Diana Marlowe, but this detail he did 
not mention to Brent. At this phase of his life 
Tomlin talked very little of himself and he no 
longer spoke at all of his friend, Miss Marlowe. 
But when the two men had separated, Peter 
asked himself why Brent should be looking so 
damnably down in the mouth. He thought of 
Aline Armstrong with a mixture of curiosity, 
disapproval, and something like relief. He did 
not wholly like her, yet if Brent did—and if 
they married in the end. . . . Even to himself 
Tomlin had never acknowledged the fear that 
had clawed at him in the summer, when for a 
dreadful moment he had watched Brent and 
Diana sitting together beside his own camp 
fire. There had been a look on their faces 
which made them seem alike, an indefinable 
something which had seemed to insulate 
them from their surroundings, from the 
prosaic workaday world. Tomlin had as¬ 
sured himself that he was a jealous ass! 
Yet, later on, he was still aware of one 
significant fact: sweet and friendly as Diana 
was she would never let him approach that sub¬ 
ject which for over a year had been uppermost 
in his mind. The evening of Brent’s appear- 


DIANA 327 

ance at his office Peter went to Diana’s apart¬ 
ment in a thoughtful mood. 

Brent drove his car to the garage, and then 
walked three miles in the park before going 
home to dinner. The thing he had not told 
Peter was that the afternoon had also brought 
him a letter from Aline. He knew each para¬ 
graph and sentence as though he were an actor, 
letter perfect as to his lines. 


It seemed to him an extraordinary letter, 
and, for the life of him, Brent could not 
decide whether it revealed an Aline simpler 
and franker than he had known—and really 
frightened—or an extraordinarily subtle woman 
whom hitherto he had not even remotely 
divined. In the park, despite the chill of the 
winter day, he stopped on a stone bridge over¬ 
looking a lake and an empty ball ground, and 
took from his pocket that faintly perfumed 
gray envelope. He wanted to be sure he had 
not twisted a phrase here or there: the thing 
hypnotized him. It was undated, gave the im¬ 
pression of having been written hurriedly, and 
yet he wondered whether even this were true: 

“When you get this, Brent, you will probably have 
heard from Frances or her lawyers that she’s really 
getting the divorce at last. For some time I’ve 
known this was coming, and I hope that the divorce 


328 


FULFILLMENT 


will not be obtained on statutory grounds—that my 
name will not be mentioned. I do believe that 
Frances is capable of treating the thing impersonally. 

‘‘And yet, Brent, there’s no doubt that Frances 
suspects me: since leaving New York she has never 
written me a line, although I have sent her several 
letters, which indicates just one thing, I am sure. 
Her friend, Mrs. YanCleve Porter, is a gossip of the 
first water, and of course she and Frances correspond, 
and not only concerning business affairs. Recently 
I’ve been conscious of people talking, friends, ac¬ 
quaintances ; our affair is no longer our own secret, I 
mean about last year. So lately I’ve been horribly 
on edge, sensitive, imagining things— One is so 
brave where one’s real caring is concerned—until 
suddenly one feels that hideous breath of suspicion, 
scandal—and then any woman is a coward!— Ah, 
Brent, it’s in moods like this that I thank God I am 
dealing with a man of honor— I wonder whether 
even you can quite understand a woman’s feeling in a 
case of this kind, her pride in having given without 
measure, her cowardly fear of that old hag, Mrs. 
Grundy! Once I laughed at her, but now—Brent, 
dear, I’m wondering whether you will understand. 
And then something tells me that you will, that I’m 
safe, that for us both happiness is waiting—just 
around the corner. 

Aline.” 

Brent read this letter once more, and it 
seemed to him an amazingly final document, 
far more final than a mere divorce decree. It 
did not seem a letter a man could ignore. He 


DIANA 


329 


thought about it in the park, on the way home, 
and at dinner, under cover of the gay talk of 
those two young idiots—at the moment agi¬ 
tated concerning the great question whether 
wearing an engagement ring is a suitable and 
dignified custom, or a mere folkway running 
back to barbarism. Boblee had been reading a 
learned book on social customs written by a 
college professor, and as a result she sniffed at 
the suggestion of diamond solitaires. Pat sus¬ 
pected her, however, of an undue passion for 
saving the money of a young man whom 
she promptly railed at as a most uncivil 
engineer. . . . 

Brent left them in his study, still wrangling 
over 11 folkways’* and “mores” and “social 
codes.” He was in that grim, restless mood 
when tramping country roads or city streets 
seems imperative. He wanted to consider 
Aline’s letter from every possible angle. He 
had work to do, but he could not concentrate 
upon his brief until he had reached some de¬ 
cision. It seemed to him that his whole future 
was at stake; if he accepted her view of their 
case, it meant marrying Aline just as soon as 
the final decree had been granted. But if he 
repudiated Aline’s claim—shook off all re¬ 
sponsibility for the woman who had been his 
mistress—would he be discrediting her in the 
eyes of all their friends and acquaintances? A 
few months ago the question would have seemed 


330 


FULFILLMENT 


absurd, but now be realized how often and how 
openly they had been together of late. 

Was the situation the genuine outcome of his 
own mistake, or something a good deal like a 
frame-up, planned by Aline as to every detail ? 

It was some time after ten when he found 
himself again on the Avenue, his mind still 
circling that letter like some dreary animal on 
a leash. He told himself that were he to con¬ 
sult men he knew, men at his club, keen, com¬ 
bative, sophisticated, they would laugh at his 
dilemma, tell him that all this mental worry 
was ridiculous, that without question Aline be¬ 
longed to the class of women who prey upon the 
Brent Appletons of this world; that in the last 
analysis the situation was of her making, not 
his. And perhaps they would be right, he 
hoped they would be right—and yet . . . He 
went into a hotel to buy a cigar, and knew sud¬ 
denly that what he wanted was not masculine 
counsel concerning his dilemma, but to see Di¬ 
ana, to show her the letter, tell her all the de¬ 
tails he had hitherto withheld. Of course this 
was the one thing he could not do. 

But to speak to her, at least, seemed impera¬ 
tive: he felt shaken, inexplicably overwrought. 
Had he known it his mood was like Boblee’s 
that wild day in Central Park, and his impulse 
now was exactly what Boblee's had been then. 
He went to a telephone booth and called up 
Diana’s number: when she answered he said: 

“Did I wake you? I know how late it is,— 


DIANA 331 

but I wanted just to speak to you—to bear your 
voice.” 

Her reply came over the wire: 

“Brent, what has happened? Where are 
you ?’’ 

He told her, and she said instantly: 

“I’m not dressed, but it won’t take long. 
Wait for me. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” 

She rang off, and there was nothing for him 
to do but wait. In an enormous mirror he 
found himself staring into his own eyes, and 
the chalky look of his face made him realize 
how his voice must have sounded to her— 
that he had frightened her. In an astonish¬ 
ingly short space of time he saw her coming 
through the revolving door, and in another mo¬ 
ment they were out in the foggy autumn night. 

She slipped her hand through his arm; he 
saw the spirals of her dark hair wet and gleam¬ 
ing under her small hat, saw her gray eyes, 
wide open, luminous. 

*‘Brent, what is it?” 

“My wife is suing me for a divorce. She’s 
doing it very decently—in Paris—and I ought 
to be relieved—really glad—but ...” 

They were walking along a side street of 
quiet brown stone dwellings, tame looking, yet 
somehow secretive. Out of the fog a church 
spire sprang suddenly, slim and black against 
the silver mist. 

Diana’s voice had its little husky undertone. 

“I think I understand, Brent. You’ve found 


332 


FULFILLMENT 


out how the past we want to forget often clings 
to ns. You wanted to see me—to tell me this— 
and say good-by.” 

He held her arm tightly. “Not good-by, 
Diana. And yet—you’re partly right. All 
day I’ve been feeling not free, as I’d hoped, 
but more than ever caged—I can’t see my way 
out, honorably.” 

He felt her tremble, but after a moment she 
said, slowly: 

“I’m rather a heathen, Brent. I had too 
much of creeds and churches in my boarding- 
school days; so I don’t go often, now, or believe 
all we were once taught. Yet there are a few 
ideas that matter. Honor, loyalty, and courage, 
always. They count to you, too. As long as we 
feel the same way we can’t be really 
separated. ...” 

Brent said grimly: “That’s the bogie I’m 
afraid of—separation. Even you can’t know 
what it means! ’ ’ 

She gave him a rather twisted little smile. 

“Can’t I, Brent? Well, I suppose hidebound 
people who have never been tempted—and even 
Brent Appletons who have—can hardly under¬ 
stand how tame, ‘good’ women may want just 
to let go. . . . There are times when virtue 
seems a dead weight!” 

Brent held her arm more tightly: 

“Sometimes, Diana, I wish you could stop 
analyzing and just—feel!” 

Her laugh came close to being a sob. 


DIANA 333 

“It’s when a woman feels most that she has 
to analyze. It’s her only salvation. . . . ” 

Condensed to fine rain the fog was in their 
nostrils, against their cold cheeks. Together 
they walked on and on, the shadowy night- 
bound city theirs to roam in, to lose themselves 
in, place and time forgotten. After a long 
silence Diana said more lightly: 

“Understand, Brent, I haven’t given up. 
Something will happen yet, to free you. Such 
things do happen every day, little foolish trifles, 
perhaps, that change the course of lives. But 
remember this: I care more—infinitely more— 
because you can’t fling aside obligations you 
assumed, yet which no one can enforce—because 
worldly tags can’t convince you or free you 
—just because you want to be convinced and 
freed—” 

In the taxicab which found them at last, a 
long way from their own part of the city, they 
were driven to Diana’s house. They seemed 
to have exhausted their vocabularies and them¬ 
selves, and when Brent kissed her good-by it 
was without a word. Then he unlocked her 
door, and she disappeared in the dimly lit hall. 

Hours later, while Brent smoked by his 
study fire, Diana lay on the couch in her living 
room and watched the high white light on the 
tower. It was almost uncanny, and it was 
certainly an evidence of her childish incon¬ 
sistency, the way that light comforted her, 
made bitter things bearable. As she watched 


334 


FULFILLMENT 


its steady glow she thought at last, not of 
Brent or herself, but of all the millions sleeping 
within sight of that great tower, men and 
women setting their watches by those flashes of 
light, unconsciously affected by the significance 
of the great shadow reaching up into the dark¬ 
ness. She remembered her own eager defense 
that day in the mountains of trees and towers: 
ah, she had been right! They were the things 
freest and most beautiful in all the world. 
She told herself that as long as she could see 
that high light she could endure anything that 
came to her. It wasn’t impersonal and ab¬ 
stract and aloof; in some perfectly illogical 
fashion it convinced her that atomic human 
beings really matter to the universe—in spite 
of the stars. 


IX 


In this unstable cantankerous world a 
friendship between two men is sometimes 
a subtle, inarticulate and yet really beauti¬ 
ful relation. That between Brent Appleton 
and Peter Tomlin was comradely, intellectually 
bold, and at the same time full of little per¬ 
sonal reticences. They knew each other well— 
temperament, tastes, prejudices—and yet with 
regard to their private lives, especially with 
regard to women, a wall of reserve separated 
them almost as completely as though they had 
been strangers. 

According to many novelists, particularly the 
male novelist, two women brushing their hair 
at midnight, or drinking tea together, invari¬ 
ably discuss emotion and men, specific indi¬ 
vidual men, whereas two male cronies of the 
same class and type may discourse upon 
Woman, her vagaries and foibles, without once 
alluding to any particular woman. Except for 
Brent’s relations with Frances—long ago an¬ 
alyzed from a medical as well as a marital 
angle with his friend and physician—this habit 
of reserve prevailed, an inhibition springing 
from the code Thou-shalt-not-kiss-and-tell. 
Which explains why Brent neither knew nor 

335 


336 


FULFILLMENT 


guessed how far beyond friendship Tomlin’s 
feeling for Diana had progressed, and why 
Tomlin was almost as ignorant concerning 
Brent’s affair with Aline. 

As the winter grew boisterous, and wide¬ 
spread illness kept the doctor perpetually on 
his rounds, he yet found time to wonder why 
it was that whenever he saw Brent he ex¬ 
perienced a feeling of acute depression. Out¬ 
wardly the life of the lawyer was prosperous 
enough, and at home Boblee’s restoration to 
health and spirits and Pat’s obvious devotion 
created such an atmosphere of vivid youth and 
happiness as might have thawed the ice of the 
most determined adult pessimism. So it was 
that Peter found Brent’s increasing thinness, 
his wooden immobility, even in the society of 
his oldest and best friend, hard to explain. 
And then a chance encounter with Boblee gave 
the doctor food for thought. He had been din¬ 
ing one evening with Brent, Boblee having 
gone for a brief visit to Pat’s family in New 
Rochelle. But as the doctor was getting ready 
to leave, around eleven, Boblee blew in, quite 
literally, entering the warm firelit study like 
a young March wind. 

Tomlin lingered a few minutes longer, banter¬ 
ing her about Pat, and asking news of the Cong- 
don family. When he went downstairs she 
went with him, leaving Brent to immerse him¬ 
self in a neglected brief. 

In a vivid blue frock, with touches of pale 


DIANA 


337 


yellow, the girl was lovely, and Tomlin made 
the properly appreciative speech as he strug¬ 
gled into his overcoat. She laughed up at him: 

“Aren’t you glad you pulled me through, 
last winter, Dr. Pete? So I could live to wear 
this frock, and be engaged to Pat, and vamp 
his Honorable Dad?” 

Peter was glad, and said so, but Boblee’s 
smile faded as she put her hands on the lapels 
of his coat, her shining eyes suddenly serious. 

“ Peter, I wish you could help Brent now, as 
you helped me then.’ 9 

“What do you mean, child? Brent’s thinner 
than usual, perhaps, but he’s perfectly well.” 

“He’s perfectly miserable, Dr. Pete! Pat 
sees it too, and we don’t know what to do 
about it—I suppose there’s nothing we can do! 
He’s unhappier than he was even with Aunt 
Frances. He doesn’t want her back, I know. 
But there’s something wrong, dreadfully 
wrong. ’ ’ 

“But what, Boblee?” 

The girl, her beautiful eager eyes almost on 
a level with Tomlin’s, seemed suddenly mature. 

“Peter, we don’t know anything—it’s all 
guess work. But he sees Mrs. Armstrong all 
the time, and I know he doesn’t want to! I’m 
afraid—afraid she’s going to marry him. . . . 
Of course that sounds like a horrid scratchy 
cat—and I liked her once—but it’s what Pat 
and I both think. There’s really something 
queer about it. ’ ’ 


338 


FULFILLMENT 


Peter, unwillingly impressed, spoke crossly: 

“Brent can do crazy things, but he’s not 
that bad. You’ve got marrying on the brain, 
child. ’ ’ 

She shook her head. 

“ You ’re thinking about Pat —he talks about 
bride cake and wedding rings all the time— 
But truly, Peter, Brent tries to bluff me—and 
he can’t. I know him too well. He’s having 
an awful time—and Mrs. Armstrong’s all mixed 
up with it. He sees her and sees her—she’s 
always calling him on the ’phone—and he 
avoids seeing the one person he wants to see!” 

But Tomlin was opening the front door, bent 
on getting away. Boblee sprang after him, 
kissing him good-by in a way that mutely 
begged his pardon for something she had said, 
or done. And still her words followed him into 
the blustering night: 

“Try to help them, Peter, please!” 

Them? Now why had she used the plural. 
"Who in Heaven or Hades were they? Hr. Tom¬ 
lin slipped on the glass-like pavement, nearly 
fell, and fiercely signaled a taxicab just 
turning the corner. But all the way home the 
driving hail beat upon the windows of the cab, 
and seemed to be pelting him with questions. 
Was what he feared, and yet hoped might be 
the mere figment of his imagination, true after 
all? More than once in the past few months 
Diana had refused to marry him, yet last 
Spring he had felt that she was nearly won. 


DIANA 


339 


Those visits Brent had paid to the mountain 
camp—that evening when Peter had seen the 
two together, and imagined that a sort of wall 
shut them apart from everyone else—the sig¬ 
nificant fact that recently Brent never spoke 
Diana’s name, and that Diana rarely mentioned 
Brent—all these separate pieces seemed now to 
fall into place. 

And Aline Armstrong—that affair also 
seemed at last intelligible. More than a year 
ago Tomlin had perceived a reaction in Brent, 
a new rebellion against the arid desert of his 
marriage. At the time Peter had fancied that 
Mrs. Armstrong might be the woman respon¬ 
sible for this changed attitude, but it was no 
business of his. Both Brent and the lady 
were quite capable of taking care of themselves; 
so he had dismissed the subject from his mind. 
He had heard gossip about Aline, those gos¬ 
samer filaments of hearsay which mean at once 
so much and so little. Now that he considered 
the possibility of her marrying Brent those 
suggestions and innuendoes took on a new 
significance. 

In Tomlin there was a streak of rather rare 
tolerance, an understanding of human nature 
which precluded harshness in his judgment of 
women. His scientific training and profes¬ 
sional observation had taught him that the 
mature awakened woman is subject to the same 
temptations men meet, every day. He knew 
that such a woman may experience love, even 


340 


FULFILLMENT 


yield herself to it, outside the pale of marriage, 
and still retain a spiritual sensitiveness and a 
keen sense of responsibility. But concerning 
the woman, or the man either, given to 
promiscuity, Tomlin had few illusions. If 
those things people intimated about Aline Arm¬ 
strong were true, if his own perception of her 
nature were just, she was not the woman to 
make Brent happy, even if he loved her. 
According to Boblee he was not bearing him¬ 
self like a happy lover: quite the contrary. 

The cab stopped before the door, and Peter 
felt as though he had traveled across the 
world since that moment with Boblee in the 
hall. What a bland unseeing male he had been, 
and how happy in his ignorance. Yet he could 
not leave the matter there. 

A few days afterward he was taking Diana 
to the theater, and on their return, despite the 
hour, he asked if he might go up with her. 
She agreed, friendly and gay as she always 
was with him. But he had been watching her 
closely all the evening, freshly aware of the 
delicate hollows about her temples, of the 
shadows beneath her eyes, often marks of men¬ 
tal suffering which the physician learns to 
differentiate from ills purely physical. They 
were marked by the same branding iron, Brent 
and Diana. Yet mere indications were not 
enough. He must know, if he were to follow 
any defined plan of action. 


DIANA 


341 


When he had unlocked her door and she had 
touched the switch lighting the lamp on her 
desk, Tomlin took off her cloak and pulled out 
her chair. 

“I’m going to ask you something I have no 
business asking, Miss Diana. When you have 
evaded some things I’ve wanted to say to you— 
a good many times, too—has it been because of 
some other man?” 

She looked at him rather reproachfully, but 
the uncontrollable blush that burnt her face 
answered him more surely than look or speech. 

“Is that a fair question, Doctor? Yet I sup¬ 
pose it is—you don’t do things that are not 
fair. Yes, there is—someone. ...” 

Peter lifted his big shoulders in a gesture at 
once resigned and pugnacious. 

“Then he’s a fool—not to throw his scruples 
to the winds—if you love him!” 

Diana looked him straight in the eye. 

“Possibly. Only you don’t mean that, Doc¬ 
tor. And perhaps it’s because he’s such a 
blunderer that I care. At least he has too 
much conscience to be comfortable, which is 
something, nowadays. ...” 

Then she leaned toward Peter, and for the 
moment she reminded him, as she had often 
reminded Brent, of Boblee. 

“If you could just see more of him, Doctor! 
He’s having a bad time I know, and there’s 
nobody else he can talk to.” 

At this Tomlin rose to go. They seemed 


342 


FULFILLMENT 


convinced—these muddle-headed, sentimental 
women—-that it was his business to protect that 
idiot Brent from the results of his own 
stupidity! 

“He’s not the only one,” he said, but Diana 
smiled at him. Taking his hand she laid it 
against her cheek. 

“ Peter, I hate myself for hurting you. I 
didn’t mean to, dear.” 

Hours later he still felt her warm velvety 
cheek against his hand. After all, if Brent 
had played the fool, what of himself? Those 
vivid married years behind him, and these 
recent years of looking on at life, learning to 
live in the mind rather then in the emotions, 
enjoying his books, his friends, his pipe, not 
asking too much of Fate—had all this ex¬ 
perience taught him nothing? Here he was, in¬ 
volved again, as absurd and illogical as any 
young whipper-snapper just out of college. 

Some weeks later he went to see Aline, at 
Brent’s request. 

“She says she isn’t ill, but I don’t like the 
way this bronchitis hangs on: she’s had it since 
the Fall. Just drop in casually, old man. 
Don’t let her know I sent you.” 

Tomlin dropped in, obediently, and he hoped 
casually, but Aline said at once: 

“Of course Brent Appleton sent you. He’s 
fussing about a silly little cough that doesn’t 
amount to beans! ’ ’ 


DIANA 


343 


She let him make the usual tests and Tomlin 
agreed that it was not serious—yet. But she 
must take the medicine he was prescribing, and 
avoid fatigue, late hours, too many cigarettes. 

She laughed, and went on smoking, but found 
for her visitor a cigar considerably better than 
his own, which was soothing. He wondered 
how on earth he was going to say the thing he 
had in the back of his head, the thing that had 
nothing to do with prescriptions, or the iniquity 
of women smoking enough cigarettes to weaken 
the most robust health. And then she gave 
him his cue. 

“Has Brent said anything about—about me, 
Doctor? I mean did you know that when he 
has his divorce we expect to be married?” 

Peter smoked on for a moment in astonished 
silence. This was a situation much more defi¬ 
nite than he had realized. When he spoke it 
was soberly, reasonably, with no trace of 
gruffness. 

“No, he has said nothing to me. I’ll confess 
I’m surprised.” 

Aline flipped her cigarette into an ash tray 
and turned toward him with something vaguely 
truculent in her air. 

“I don’t see why you should be. . . .” 

Tomlin considered what he was to say next. 
It was a dangerous business, this playing with 
human explosives. He rather expected to be 
blown to atoms any moment. 


344 


FULFILLMENT 


“Well, yon see, I'd begun to think that 
Brent’s affections were engaged elsewhere. 
But of course I may be mistaken.” 

Aline’s little head was in the air; her hair was 
no redder than the sudden flame in her cheeks 
which put to shame her careful rouge. 

“I think you are,” she said furiously, yet 
not without dignity. 

Looking at her now Tomlin considered the 
story he had heard, a carefully authenticated 
rumor concerning an affair of only last summer, 
at the time when Brent was in Vermont just 
after Boblee’s accident. There had been a 
house party in the country: Aline had enter¬ 
tained a gay group of people on her hilltop 
above the Hudson. What had especially inter¬ 
ested Tomlin was the accidental information 
which had come his way concerning one guest— 
a young man with an unsavory reputation— 
who had returned after the others were gone. 
The doctor felt that Brent should be told cer¬ 
tain facts, but he could not be his friend’s in¬ 
formant. Was there anything in the world 
that he could do, without playing the part of 
either tale-bearer or blackmailer? 

The red-haired wisp of a woman had stopped 
blushing with anger, and was smiling at him 
lazily, as though in some mysterious way she 
were reading his thoughts, his doubts, his per¬ 
plexity. Then she coughed, a troublesome irri¬ 
tating little cough that she had been suppress¬ 
ing all during his visit. He rose to go, but 


DIANA 


345 


picked up the prescription he had given her. 

‘ ‘ On second thonghts 111 have this filled and 
sent to yon,” he said. “Take the drops 
three times a day. Letting that cough run on 
would be risky.’ 9 

She looked at him, with a little smile, although 
her impulse was to seize the scrap of paper 
and tear it to bits. There was something 
about this big, slow-moving, mastiff type of 
man that perplexed her and seemed to menace 
her carefully planned future. She said with a 
droll gesture, like that of some malicious 
small boy: 

“Sorry you don’t approve of Brent’s taste, 
Doctor. I should have broken my news more 
carefully. ’ ’ 

At that Tomlin’s lip twisted into what might 
have passed for a smile; yet Aline was con¬ 
scious that the deep-set eyes under the shaggy 
brows were unexpectedly beautiful, and sadder 
than she had ever seen them. 

“My dear girl, it’s not for me to approve 
or disapprove. Yet if I confessed the entire 
truth I’d tell you that if you married Brent it 
might be the best thing that could happen— 
for me.” 

With that cryptic remark he departed, and 
Aline sat down and began another cigarette, 
musing upon this elliptical conversation. Be¬ 
neath her surface calm was a persistent, dull 
ache at her heart. She had known that Brent 
was no longer ardent and passionate, as he had 


346 


FULFILLMENT 


been. Yet she had explained the change, to 
herself, as an evidence of that tiresome school¬ 
boy conscience of his, that exaggerated dislike 
of secrecy and intrigue. She had told herself 
that, once the divorce was a fact accomplished 
and their own marriage possible, his aloofness 
would vanish; that again she would charm his 
senses and answer that starved need in him for 
all she had to give. 

Now Tomlin’s suggestion that there might 
be another woman in the case opened wide the 
wound of secret suspicion and fear which for 
months she had tried to ignore. To be sure 
last summer she had flown into a violent rage 
when Brent had gone up to visit his niece 
instead of coming to her; in the first reaction 
of that rage she had planned her house-party, 
and propinquity and opportunity had fanned 
a thin small flame of curiosity into a fire of 
emotional adventure with one of her guests. 
That experience she regarded as a mere flash 
in the pan. Moreover, it would never have hap¬ 
pened if Brent had come: the fault was not hers 
but his. If he had not neglected her she 
would never have looked at that other man, the 
selfish, shopworn young bachelor of whose care¬ 
ful pursuit she had been aware for months, 
ever since their first meeting after the evening 
when Boblee and two others had been Cunning¬ 
ham ’s guests. . . . 

She had justified herself, but she slept badly 
that night. Tomlin’s medicine did her no good 


DIANA 


347 


for the simple reason that instead of following 
directions she yielded to a vixenish and 
futile impulse and poured the medicine down 
the kitchen sink. 

Yet this proof of her scorn for Peter Tomlin 
and all his works could not prevent her memory 
from dwelling on what he had said. When she 
thought of Brent she had that baffled feeling 
so many women experience regarding men they 
are supposed to know well, even intimately, 
that realization of how many hours in any 
man’s life are unaccounted for, even to his wife, 
and more especially to the woman not living 
under his roof. 


X 


Six months later the city had recovered 
from the siege of a hard winter and the 
air was spicy with Spring smells, every 
little park and triangle brave with its array of 
fresh green and the dazzling yellow of crocus 
and daffodil. In Central Park, not a stone’s 
throw from the crowded treeless Avenue, whole 
orchards of young fruit trees had been 
gloriously blossoming for weeks, a riot of 
snowy loveliness. 

To Boblee and Pat the unexpected had 
happened; he had landed a real job, a better 
thing than he had hoped for, under thirty, and 
Brent had consented to an immediate marriage, 
even though Boblee was just finishing school, 
and only nineteen. 

At this time it happened that Brent him¬ 
self was reaping the reward of some able, even 
brilliant work in connection with the Conway 
Company. Some months earlier he had sent a 
young lawyer from his New York office to con¬ 
sult an English firm and take the offensive 
against the manufacturer whose withdrawal 
had almost wrecked Conway’s business. At 
this drastic step the surly Englishman’s op¬ 
position had crumpled ignominiously, and in 

348 


DIANA 


349 


a few months the whole situation had changed; 
the business of the Company was again grow¬ 
ing rapidly, and the stock was almost at par, 
where Conway had prophesied it would be in a 
year or two. 

This outcome justified Brent’s decision to 
help the young couple in a more substantial 
fashion than had seemed possible, earlier; he 
gave Boblee half of his stock, outright, planning 
to sell out and re-invest for her within another 
year. Meanwhile the income would supple¬ 
ment Pat’s earnings, lessen the risk of 
early marriage and make travel possible. 
Brent was amused to realize how little all this 
meant to Boblee, as yet. It was Pat who but¬ 
tonholed him in the library one evening and 
thanked him with a sober recognition of the 
value of his gift, and of the fact that in this 
way Brent was safeguarding Boblee’s future. 

Brent had laughed at the boy’s serious 
face, and had touched him on the shoulder 
affectionately. 

“My dear fellow, Boblee is my responsibility 
as well as yours. And there are certain 
advantages about early marriage which I covet 
for you both. They say too much money is a 
bad thing—I don’t know anything about that. 
But there are times when too little may be 
crippling, demoralizing. ’ ’ 

Pat nodded, and flushed. He said quickly: 
“You’ve been corking to us, Brent. And we ’re 
both hoping that you’ll be as happy as we are. ” 


350 


FULFILLMENT 


Brent smiled and shook the boy’s hand, but 
the smile worried Pat. It seemed to him wist¬ 
ful, even ironic, as though the older man had 
long since ceased to hope for any such wind¬ 
fall as happiness. Yet Pat and Boblee had 
been told that in the not distant future Brent 
was to marry Mrs. Armstrong, and how such a 
situation had come about neither of them had 
been able to understand. It seemed to be one 
of those freaks of Fate or circumstance which 
nobody ever explains. Boblee was glad that 
she was going away, that she would not be at 
home to see them married. Even during those 
rushing days before her own wedding the girl 
sometimes felt a lump in her throat, a pang of 
dread that Brent might be destined to miss for¬ 
ever this strange blend of rapture and content 
which was almost too marvelous to seem quite 
real. . . . 


The wedding that May evening was like all 
other weddings, Brent supposed, only rather 
worse, since it was making such a hole in his 
life. He wondered how and when he should 
see Boblee again. How lovely she was to-night, 
this tall, unexpectedly stately girl in the ivory 
satin and filmy lace of her grandmother. The 
ceremony was conducted by a little bent homely 
Bishop, whose quizzical, sympathetic smile was 
even more endearing than his Episcopal robes 
of office were impressive. He had known 


DIANA 


351 


Boblee’s mother and father and had baptized 
the outraged and vociferous infant more than 
eighteen years ago. When the bride and groom 
rose from their knees he kissed the tall girl 
twice, once for himself and once for her 
mother. . . . 

Boblee was glad that Diana was there; for 
some reason she had not wanted to come, but 
getting married without her would have been 
dreadful. Brent and the Bishop and Pat’s 
sisters and Peter Tomlin all mattered to 
Boblee, even then. But it was astonishing how 
swiftly things happened, how soon they were in 
the car, with confetti all over their new clothes, 
and carrying with them the smell of wet violets 
and lilies of the valley, blent with the odors of 
New York streets, gasoline and warm, wet 
asphalt. 

It was behind them at last, the old life, the 
dear old house, full of wedding guests and 
bride cake, the long, shining glimmer of Fifth 
Avenue at night. They were in their section 
of the Limited, moving slowly, when Boblee 
found Pat slipping something on her finger, 
over the awkward newness of her wedding ring. 

“All that guff about superstitions and bar¬ 
barous customs sounds well, Boblee, in a book. 
But you must have two rings, to be properly 
married—and one must be a diamond—I don’t 
care what you call it! ” 

The bride’s eyes were gleaming like brown, 
sunlit water, and her red lips curved upward. 


352 


FULFILLMENT 


“Pat, you darling, it’s like dew—and stars. 
I wanted it all the time—awfully.’’ 

Back in the Eleventh Street house Peter 
Tomlin was wondering whether he had been 
dreaming of stage stuff and moving pictures, 
or whether he really was in the middle of a 
startling little drama somewhere near an excit¬ 
ing climax. 

In the drawing room, eating thin sandwiches 
and cake and drinking the wedding punch, a 
group of people still lingered. The Bishop, 
Pat’s father and mother, several of Boblee’s 
schoolmates, these Peter saw with no emotion. 
But sitting side by side, engaged in amicable 
conversation, were two young women, Diana 
Marlowe and Mrs. Armstrong. Peter found 
himself intrigued by the fact that they set each 
other off so well, the one tall, dark-haired, the 
other small and fair. Both were extremely 
handsome in their fresh spring-like frocks, 
Aline’s green and white, Diana’s a shimmering 
yellow, exactly the shade of the flowers scat¬ 
tered about the house. 

The doctor was standing just within the 
embrasure of a window, from which he had 
watched the bride’s departure, when he heard 
one of Boblee’s school friends speak to Diana. 
She looked up, nodded, and then swiftly crossed 
the room to where the girl waited with a little 
elderly man, obviously her father, whom she 
wanted Miss Marlowe to meet. Just at this 
moment Brent came in from the hall. Peter 


DIANA 


353 


caught a glimpse of the tall figure above the 
others, then he saw his friend’s face as he 
looked at Diana talking to the girl and the frail 
little man. For an instant Peter felt again that 
pang he had known at the camp, realized an 
emotion as swift and devastating as a flame. 
For a breath of time Brent’s secret was re¬ 
vealed, then, as a curtain drops, his expression 
changed, became conventional, impersonal. 
Some one spoke to him, the groups changed, 
people were saying that it was late, that they 
must go, that it had been a lovely wedding. . . . 

Aline Armstrong came slowly across the 
room; her eyes met Peter’s, and as her color 
flamed suddenly he knew that she too had seen 
the look on Brent’s face. She said in a low 
voice: 

“Please ask Brent to come up to the library 
for a minute . 9 ’ 

Tomlin nodded, then felt a hand on his, cold, 
soft, like a flower that has been chilled. Five 
minutes later Brent went into the library: why 
Peter had sent him there he did not know. 
Perhaps he was hoping, illogically, that Diana 
might be there for one of those exquisite 
moments that came to them so rarely. But it 
was Aline who stood before the fireless hearth, 
her hair bright in the shadow, her small pointed 
face pale. 

She put out her hand and Brent took it, and 
then exclaimed because it was so cold. She 
laughed. 


354 


FULFILLMENT 


“That’s because I’m excited. I’m going to 
do something dramatic. ’ ’ 

Pie looked at her blankly and she dropped 
into a chair and glanced np at him, her head 
flung back, her eyes curiously bright. 

“Brent, I’m not going to marry you, after 
all. It’s all off. I’ve made a mistake, and 
just found it out.” 

He felt the earth rocking under his feet, felt 
the incredulity he had known on that night 
when she had first spoken to him of marriage. 
Now, as then, the context seemed gone, pages 
snatched from this book of experience before he 
had read them. 

“But Aline—” 

It came again, that small, thin tinkle of 
laughter. 

“Are you going to tell me that you can’t live 
[without me, that you love me devotedly?” 

Brent was silent, then he made a movement 
toward her, but she sprang to her feet. Again 
she reminded him of that sleek small cat he 
had seen once, with eyes sparking green and 
yellow fire. . . . She was not grieved or hurt 
or pathetic, she was a dynamic bundle of sheer 
rage. 

“It’s partly my own fault: I’ve been kidding 
myself. But you have been stupid, cowardly, 
smug! Brent Appleton, I don’t want your 
damned chivalry! The whole thing’s over— 
done with—I hope I’ll never see you again!” 


DIANA 355 

She was gone, leaving Brent staring at the 
door which she had slammed behind her. 


Three minutes later Peter opened that same 
door. 

“The Bishop wants to say good-by, Brent.” 

The two men faced each other, Peter inter¬ 
rogative, Brent looking a little dazed and smil¬ 
ing ruefully at his friend. 

“Aline—she’s broken with me, Peter. 
She’s—” 

“Well, why shouldn’t she?” asked Peter. 

“But it’s all mysterious, uncanny. I don’t 
understand—” 

Peter sat down rather heavily. 

“There’s nothing uncanny about a woman’s 
changing her mind. She—but why should you 
understand ? Do you want to marry her, after 
all?” 

Brent flushed, then laughed suddenly, and 
lifted his head as though a weight had been 
removed. Peter saw that his eyes looked like 
the eyes of the boy he had known years ago, 
young, full of burning hope. Dropping his 
cigar, Brent stared about the familiar room: 
to him it seemed as though somebody had 
lighted the fire. The doctor had never seen a 
creature so swiftly transformed—but yes, he 
had, too—patients coming out from under an 
anaesthetic, those who threw off the effects 


356 


FULFILLMENT 


quickly. Tomlin realized now that for months 
Brent had been anaesthetized by sheer, dull 
misery, such misery as he, Peter Tomlin, would 
never know again. Youth, love, and adventure 
—inescapable anguish, too—these are formulas 
in the laboratory of experience with which men 
deal less frequently as they grow older. He 
told himself that his own day, for the extremes 
of either happiness or pain, was over. . . . 

But Brent was saying, eagerly: 

“Peter, do you mind if I take her home? 
She—I 

Tomlin met the blue eyes squarely and went 
on smoking. He nodded, finally. Brent’s hand 
clasped his for an instant; then he was gone, 
leaving the doctor alone with his cigar and with 
those potent narcotics for men growing old— 
good memories. 


XI 


Not quite two years later on a blowy day 
in late February, Brent Appleton unlocked the 
door of his apartment overlooking Gramercy 
Park. He held an open letter in his hand, his 
face was flushed from haste and the tang of the 
East wind. As the latch clicked an impatient 
voice cried: 

11 Brent, is that you ? Oh hurry! ’’ 

For the first time in several weeks he found 
Diana up and dressed, waiting for him in the 
library—almost a replica of that beloved room 
in the Eleventh Street house, save that perhaps 
the books were not dusted with such solicitous 
care. 

She was lying back in the vast historic chair 
in which he and Boblee had sat together so 
often. 

1 ‘ Peter said I might, Brent. And that I may 
have dinner with you—that I mustn’t walk, yet, 
but that I may dine. And I’ve even been 
writing, verse, for the first time.” 

‘ ‘ Then Peter thinks you ’re really better ? ’ ’ 

“Of course. He read me a lecture on the 
iniquity of fatigue, late hours, forgetting my 
lunch. When he stops being gentle as a lamb 
and begins to roar it always means that one has 
357 


358 


FULFILLMENT 


passed the danger line. But, Brent, you look 
excited . 7 7 

“I am,” said Brent, edging carefully into the 
capacious chair. He gave her the letter and 
their heads bent over it together. Written on 
thin foreign paper, it was dated 

“Palermo, Italy. 

“Dear Brent: 

‘ ‘ I wish that instead of writing this I could see you 
for half an hour. Yet if writing is hard, talking 
might be worse. For I’m married again, Brent, the 
one thing I was so sure couldn’t happen. But it did 
happen—in Paris ten days ago. My husband is Rose- 
well Thorne, an English artist. I met him three 
years ago, when I first, came over, and at the time 
of the divorce he asked me to marry him and I re¬ 
fused. I was lonely and we were friends, but I 
was afraid. I didn’t want to marry again—the idea 
was contrary to all my wishes and plans. So I didn’t 
see him again for a long time. Then, when I went 
back to Paris after six months in London, I heard 
that he was ill, the return of an old trouble that 
started in the trenches. 

“I went to his studio to see him, and this time he 
said nothing about my marrying him. He had wanted 
a wife, what he needed now was a nurse, and he did 
not see me in that role. He looked like death, I knew 
he was poor, almost entirely dependent on his work. 
If he stayed there and did none of the things the 
doctors prescribed he would die; it was merely a mat¬ 
ter of time. So I told him—well, in the end it was 
I who married him! Paris was raw and damp, so 
I took him away, brought him here. Palermo is 


DIANA 


359 


all white streets and hot sunshine, even when it is 
cold in the shadow. Already he is a little better; 
the Paris doctors made no promises but said that a 
lazy, carefree, outdoor life would mean more than a 
fighting 1 chance. 

“Brent, it was your settlement on me, and your 
selling the house for me, that has made all this pos¬ 
sible. To some men it would seem dreadful—spend¬ 
ing their money in this way, yet I believe you will 
not mind. Only I felt I couldn’t use what you’ve 
given me, without telling you. Eventually I hope 
we may both succeed professionally, but just now 
all I can think about is getting him well. You re¬ 
member how you felt when Boblee was ill? Well, it’s 
like that. There is something about his helplessness 
that has done strange things to me, changed me. 
That’s what I am learning about life, that it means 
perpetual change. 

“And now, Brent, about yourself: I heard of 
your marriage, and I hope that you are prosperous 
and really happy. This is to thank you for your 
generosity, and to tell you what it has meant to 
us both. 

“Frances.” 

When she finished reading, Diana was not 
smiling; instead her eyelids tingled. For the 
first time she felt that she liked Frances. 

“The wisdom of Peter, Brent! Kemember 
the prophecy he made to yon—and something 
else, about marriage being big enough to in¬ 
clude all kinds of people. 

She added after a thoughful pause! “But I 
wonder if she would have done it if he hadn’t 
been ill . 9 7 


360 


FULFILLMENT 


“I wonder! That’s the first thing I thought 
of, too. Yet she’s done a generous thing.” 
Then he forgot Frances. 

‘ ‘Diana, are you sure you’re stronger, really 
getting well?” 

Of course she was; couldn’t he see it? And 
though her face was not visible at the moment, 
Brent being too near, the sensation of those 
tendrils of hair springing against his cheek was 
reassuring. But after a little she was saying 
in a different tone, low, unsteady: 

“Peter’s told me, dear. He said he had told 
you, too. I’m sorry for us both—but sorriest 
for you. I did think I could give you what you 
want so. ... I was cocksure about it. . . . Yet 
now he says it can’t be for several years, per¬ 
haps never. ...” 

“But, you foolish Beloved, I’m getting what 
I want!” 

“I know. Yet a wife is only half of mar¬ 
riage. Even Frances may discover, some day, 
that when two people really care they want 
children—sooner or later.” 

“Possibly,” he conceded. “Frances is cer¬ 
tainly a surprising person.” He added, with 
a queer smile, “And I’m likely to carry to my 
grave an unslaked curiosity concerning Bose- 
well Thorne.” 

She laughed at that. Then he knew she was 
not thinking of Frances. Brent said quietly: 

“Diana, we were idiots to go on that tire¬ 
some trip, as though you were made of iron, as 


DIANA 


361 


you seemed to be. I should have known—but 
I didn’t—the mischief is done. Yet can’t you 
see what it is to have you like this,—safe, get¬ 
ting well,—after that hellish week. ...” 

“But—” 

“No ‘buts.’ Look here, girl, the world is full 
of children. They don’t wait for ideal mar¬ 
riages—and a good thing, too, if the race is to 
continue. Plenty of them will need you—to 
help them as you helped Boblee. But how 
many of their fathers and mothers have found 
what we have,—understanding, companionship, 
this. ...” 

“This” was not a caress but the hard pres¬ 
sure of her hand. 

“You mean life is right for you, as things 
are?” 

11 For me ? Absolutely! Don’t I look it ? ” 

She met his eyes, steady and tranquil, saw 
the firm upcurving lines of his mouth, saw too, 
that something else in his face which defied 
analysis, yet which satisfied her completely, 
something she had not seen there two years 
ago. For the first time since the disastrous 
journey in Peter’s new car, borrowed for a 
holiday—Brent had no car of his own now— 
she felt the lightness of heart that belongs by 
rights to youth, felt youth’s willingness to live 
in the present. 

Josie came in to announce dinner, and Brent 
picked up his wife, with care, as though she 
were easily breakable, and carried her into the 


362 


FULFILLMENT 


dining room. Like Diana’s bedroom and the 
library, it gave on the compact little park, green 
oasis in a desert of asphalt streets. Brent 
stopped at the nearest window, Diana still lean¬ 
ing against him, and they looked down into the 
city’s misty dusk. 

Below them, beyond the green cup of the 
park, rose old houses of pinkish brick. In one 
of these, now a famous club, both Brent and 
Boblee had been born. Far above loomed the 
familiar shadow of the great tower, seen from 
a new angle. As they waited the clock began 
to flash the hour, four red lights, then the white. 
Brent watched Diana’s face as she counted the 
flashes, but suddenly she turned to him. 

4 ‘Yet Brent, Frances is right. It’s the law 
of life, change! Does it apply to love, too?” 

“If it does, dear, we’ll just go on being 
lawless. ...” 

When they looked back again it was past the 
hour and the white light shone steadfastly, 
like some intimate planet. 

THE END 




















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